The Brother from Another Planet

"and we the privileged few / from metal folding chairs in the dark / peep-a-show the world presents The Brother from Another Planet / you tell the white boy made it / the audacity / to think that / black people were universal slaves / when we are fucked on earth / thats all / just fucked up on earth"

~~ from "Princess Cruises" in Big Bank Take Little Bank by Paul Beatty

every drawn curtain

"To recall Ethel Rosenberg's green polka-dotted dress / To call your father and say, I'd forgotten how nice everyone in these red states can be / To hear him say, Yes, long as you don't move in next door / To recall every drawn curtain in the apartments you have lived"

~~ from "The Master's House" in Customs by Solmaz Sharif

broken but unhealed

"white boys steady leanin in / truly believin this is the best movie theyve ever seen / but none of em asked josh gibson to slo-dance / across the color line that / falls in an iowa field / broken but unhealed"

~~ from "Daryl Strawberry Asleep In A Field of Dreams" in Big Bank Take Little Bank by Paul Beatty

East West Literary Forum

Nina Kossman's East West Literary Forum is one of the most intriguing translation journals publishing award-winning writers from Russia, Ukraine, Chechnya, and beyond. Polina Zherebstovna's "Zaina" is a Chechnyan short story is a recent publication that held my attention. It was first published by a Russian-language house in Switzerland, and its author began writing what became an acclaimed diary of the war in Chechnya when she was only nine years old.

Eclectica Magazine's 30th Anniversary

 

Eclectica Magazine's 30th anniversary anthologies are taking shape.

Rick Steves's On the Hippy Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer

In the early a.m., I finished Rick Steves's On the Hippy Trail: Istanbul to Kathmandu and the Making of a Travel Writer, and I'd describe it as a fun, glossy memoir or travel narrative. Others would say that it is primarily a collection of journals. In any event, the journey from Southeastern Europe through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, and Nepal occurred in 1978, only a year before the Iranian Revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Reading it reminded me of reading several of Paul Theroux's travel narratives early in the pandemic after only having read one of his brother Alexander's novels previously. It's good to get away, and travel writers offer an opportunity to do so when we're anchored in domestic environs.