I saw you dirty, sleeping in the street, Your dry hide, carbon smudged ancient pottery, Your fingernails, black as oil pooling in the driveway, Your hair spiked like hawk feathers clumped by doormat mud. I mistook you for an asphalt…
Earth dwells in a tent, suffused in light weakly estranged from darkness. The lowering sky is a mordant mangkukulam, invisible. He eyeballs anxious passersby chary of tripping bolts of black magic. Moisture wafting from the soil lingers indefinably like fine…
Early today, the sun leaps brilliantly over the horizon, taking a long, spellbound jump, spinning in slow motion his legs and arms, gliding, a bird of prey. Rising light casts drawn-out shadows running up and down hills and dales. Atop…
Some historians call me Roxanne, But my father called me Roshanak, his bright little star. Born in backwater Bactria under the light of a sulfuric acid-laden planet. Though I prefer the civilized Roxana. At sweet sixteen, I married…
In the cartoon, the crab said Go on and kiss the girl. The young lovers in a late-night lake boat rendezvous. First, we’ve got to create the mood. When I was four, I pretended to be asleep until my parents…
By day, Khalid Muhammad is a mild-mannered business executive keeping busy running a marketing and brand management company. By night, his alter ego emerges; one that has a penchant for sadistic retribution towards those who wrong others, and that spends…
Madhuri Blaylock is an Indian girl everyone thinks is Black, or Spanish, or Black and Spanish. She’s from down South, has lived in the New York City area for more than twenty years, and is proof that your can take…
Short Story ID- 1/2015 My dear Isaka, How many mothers have been forced to leave their children, only to communicate with them through letters? I am penning these words inKuching, bythe muara of the Sarawak River. I was told, and…
Erica Kiefer grew up living abroad in Asia, including Taiwan, Fiji, Thailand and Indonesia. She gained a great respect for the beautiful mosaic of cultures found in various parts of the world. After graduating from International School Bangkok, she attended…
It’s early November; winter has just set in. The temperature hasn’t dipped much yet and the night is perfectly balmy. It’s a quarter past eleven. A time when thoughts, tangled in the din of pots and pans, and mundane chores…
Yudhi Raman is the pen-name of an author who is a managing director of a leading international bank in London. He was educated in India, Singapore and the UK and has also worked in New York and Mumbai. While in…