In that bowl is something sacred that only two people had witnessed the creation of. I ask Nene if this is what God felt like when he made the world. She tells me that we must feel better, because we never use a recipe.
Tag: porridge magazine
ESSAY | On The Inheritance of Touch – Malaika Kamau
I am an old crone in training. The kind of enigmatic woman who is the subject of neighborhood gossip whispered behind guarded lips. I practice for the role with some late-night pacing. Contemplation has proven to be one of the most ineffective modes of transportation, though.
ONE POEM – Lola Dekhuijzen
Sometimes I cheated,
let my sheets stand dead still
in the supermarket queue while I
hid in bed. No one suspected a thing.
ESSAY | On Melodic Kinship: Lessons from Big Bird and the Banjo – Maia Rosenberg
As a child, I remember music in all sorts of languages from many disparate parts of the world were played in our living room. They were played in the living room because it was the best space for dancing. I distinctly remember someone remarking once on how fascinating it was to see “those kids” move in ways highly reminiscent of the cultural dances tied to the music being played in our green suburban house in our green Boulder suburb.
ONE POEM – Jacob J Billingsley
About as full as a trout hung
by its gills in the smokehouse,
guts left to bake in the sun
ESSAY | I Could Sing And The Whole World Could Be My Stage – Isaac Aju
I do not know whether to say that Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie saved me or to ascribe it to God as we always do in Nigeria. When we studied so hard and passed an exam, we say it was God who did it…It is popular in Nigeria for Nigerian hospitals to display on their signboards: We take care, but only God heals.
ESSAY | I Have to Tell You – Laura Goncalves Ribeiro
When I arrive, you won’t be sitting at the kitchen granite table, where on rainy days we
shared pumpkin soup. I would not need to rehearse what to tell you at the granite table, with
no one around.
ONE POEM – Olivia Walwyn
First frost of the year
and the river is submerged in mist;
a blaze of sunlight
melting everything to dew.
ESSAY | On the Decline – Sarah Davis
You’re on the decline, she said. I had come for a frozen shoulder. I didn’t even know that could happen. Apparently they just stop working, turn solid, you have to take your other arm, lift them up, plop them down and then they lay there useless. Right now one of my arm pits has deodorant on it, the other does not.
ESSAY | Eating Khichdi in Kenya – Farah Ahamed
Nairobi, Kenya, Sunday, 1st August, 1982
I was twelve years old when I first ate khichdi for ten days in a row. It was also the first time I heard the words ‘coup d’etat.’ That Sunday, my mother came into my bedroom at three in the morning and whispered I should move to her room. In her bed, behind a locked door, we heard gun shots.
ONE POEM – Lee Fraser
are fig leaves poisonous
good first foods
solar powered roaster
basic metallurgy
ESSAY | Don’t Rattle Granny’s Bones – Sharon Kirsch
I am the daughter of a man with a TripTik. You may not know what a TripTik is, or you may understand it to be a triptych, a work of art made up of three panels, often hinged together in a sacred altarpiece.
