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.
Tag: #porridge
ESSAY | Trying To See – Erin Ruble
On a sunny September day in the early 1990s, a German couple taking a shortcut through the rock spires on the Austrian-Italian border spotted the head and back of a man jutting from a patch of half-melted ice. The couple, thinking they’d stumbled across the corpse of a mountaineer, told the owner of the inn they were staying at. He, in turn, contacted the authorities, who sent a forensic investigator.
COMFORT FOODS // Ends and Pieces – Lisa Ochoa
You’ve probably never noticed them. Their red and white box usually sits well below their thick-cut, smoked, and maple-flavored cousins in their clear ‘look at me!’ packaging. Or, sometimes, Ends and Pieces aren’t displayed at all, and you have to ask the butcher for them. Because mind you, they are the ends and pieces, the leftovers, the scraps. Who would want them?
My mom, that’s who.
FICTION | Light of The World – Sue Beardon
How she longs for the asteroid to come, to show them how little they controlled anything.
ONE POEM – Brian Alkire
That albino slug
looks like mobile marzipan,
bending its neck for a nap
in the stitchwort
tufted beside the road.
ESSAY | Initiation – Kate Stukenborg
I wanted to be a part of their club, their conversations, their laughter. Eating, I decided, was my way in.
FLASH FICTION | Blue Pieces of Sky – Mikki Aronoff
Stevie busies himself trying to match two blue pieces of sky. You watch him working the corners and the glands in your throat swell.
ONE POEM – Emily Tee
and there, by the weekend-quiet school, at the edge of the pavement, was the mouse
lying on its side, a small trickle of blood / from its open mouth
ONE POEM – Susan Shea
we can sit next to each other
looking out in the same direction
at our life smudges
together
ONE POEM – Carolyn Oulton
You offer me tea (a cardigan, story)
and someone else to make it,
which we all
pretend not to notice.
TWO POEMS – Catherine Redford
The air is suddenly sweet-smoked and humming,
and I’m back in the incense-wreathed
Lanes of 90s Brighton
FICTION | The Signmaker — David Hartley
They have agreed that this is an emergency. Signs need not be heeded in an emergency, they’re quite sure.
Porridge 