Porridge

ESSAY | A Citizen Of The World – Isaac Aju

There was something very claustrophobic about being in Nigeria. Nigeria gagged its people. Nigeria strangled people’s voices. People were often afraid to speak out. People were always afraid for no reason, and so being in Nigeria was the last thing you wanted to do. You wanted to move out of Nigeria. If that would not be possible, then you wanted to connect with people who were not Nigerians. You wanted to know more about the world. You wanted to move into the real world. You wanted your mindset to morph from Nigeria to The World.

Favorite Recipes – Ann Levin

I can still see her today. Tall, blond, and statuesque, a platinum-haired goddess with perfect teeth and a year-round tan. She was standing in the middle of the dance floor at my parents’ annual Christmas party – except it wasn’t really a dance floor. It was the dining room of our house, but with all…

ONE POEM – Daniel Hinds

Hooves leave a hard imprint, a dark wet mark.

Hoof-clop like the noise your tongue makes

When it leaves the roof of your mouth.

ONE POEM – Siobhan Ward

Its big head, glassy stare
and halting hobble
from random ewe to ewe
made me think of you –

TWO POEMS – DS Maolalai

they sit on the bridge. they cluster
as close as the round bulbs
of road-swollen blackberries,
dusty with travel.

ONE POEM – Olivia Heggarty

Cutting my hair with the meat scissors,
being told off for not using a hairdresser,
explaining that if I don’t change something

often I will do something worse

Metaphor, Make-believe and Misleading Information in Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood – Charley Barnes

‘Imagination, of course, can open any door – turn the key and let terror walk right in.’ (84) In definition of genre, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) has a wingspan that ranges fiction, nonfiction, and the ambiguous nonfiction novel. In definition of content, it is both a book with ‘dramatic power’ that warrants ‘honorary…

ONE POEM – Amanda Huggins

we revered those rake-limbed lads
on the slot machines
as though they were gods,
not fishermen’s lads.

ONE POEM – Srinjay Chakravarti

It will not miss
a trick—
or treat.
Its bulging eyeballs
on a roll,
it makes an advance
and then stops.

Three from Color Wheel — Salvatore Difalco

Underscoring the onset of nausea on the pier, feelings of self-loathing
also bubble up to the surface. “I get seasick in the bathtub, man,”
declares a ponytailed dude in Plymouth pink.

Radio Music Magic – Paul Sasges

Turn it up, turn it up, little bit higher, radio Turn it up, that’s enough, so you know it’s got soul. ‘Caravan’, Van Morrison, 1970 The transistor radio came out between the vacuum tube in the fifties and the Walkman in the seventies. I spent many hours on our braided area rug prone upon my…

Good and Beautiful — Laura Eppinger

Henri is at least good for catching the scent of socio-political turmoil in the air.

My Mother’s Quilt – Clare Reddaway

This is my mother’s quilt, but many other women have had a hand in it. It was started by my mother in the 1950s, and she made it for most of my life, in admittedly rather a desultory fashion. I remember her sitting on a freezing, pebbly beach in Suffolk, with the grey North Sea…