FROM THIS SEASON'S ISSUE: Spring 2013

FEATURES

Collisions

My Ngoc To
Love is an act of collision. Two bodies come together and react. When things go well, a mutual bond will form between the two. They can each maintain their prior self while remaining attached. A healthy relationship takes the form of two stars colliding, forming a binary system in which they dance in a shared orbit. But many things can go wrong with collisions. In some cases, both bodies will explode. There are other, rarer instances, in which one object travels at such feverish high speed, and is so much more massive, that it will devour the other.
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The Race for Kgale Hill

Rumur Dowling
According to local runners, the stage that separates the “Bushmen from the boys” during one of Botswana’s largest road races is the one that extends up the reticulated paths to the peak of Kgale Hill, Gaborone’s highest point. It is attainable only by conquering the unmarked, seemingly impassable routes of dense bush and sheer rock face that lead there. Kgale protrudes like a tubular knot from Gaborone’s otherwise unblemished flatland of saltpan and packed dirt, a nodule of soursop, baobab, bunch grass, camel thorn, hairy acacia and tangled hybrids all the same grey-green color.

Motel

Georgina Parfitt
Day 1 The blinds are, as standard, set at that particular angle. They hide you but show what’s going on outside in ribbons. What’s going on outside is every so often a car comes into the lot and every so often a car comes out. Now a white Estate comes in and a guy gets out of the car and looks around the site and locks up his car. He looks at himself in the car window. Because the motel is on a highway and the land is flat and undeveloped, you can see when the sun is about to set. Almost hour by hour you know the time by how glorious the road and the forecourt are.

The Urban Colony

Ezra Huang Stoller
A gallon of honey weighs about twelve pounds. In a single worker bee’s life, she will produce about one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Before venturing out of the hive, she will be promoted through a series of jobs. After cleaning cells, nursing the young, and producing wax, she will finally depart. The bees we often see flying alone, buzzing through flowers and trees, could easily be in the last days or hours of their lives.

Notes From
21 South Street

Poetry

Narcissus

Julian Gewirtz
The body near the screen tests itself, rests on itself, akimbo as windowcurtains pinned back, just a touch, green kimono cinched in pale rope, as one might flinch if pressed into soul’s glinting weight. Quick now, quick, those little lamps have all burned down, now your blue dune of breastbone isn’t

Fiction

The Endless

Mika Seifert
I was having lunch on the Quai des Célestins the first time he called. It was somewhat of a nice day, I think. Monsieur Leduc ordered the veal cutlet and I think I ordered the pasta. Or maybe I ordered a salad. Yes, I ordered a salad, now I’m certain of it. The wind was gentle, only a breeze really, and I remember thinking, when there is a breeze like that one should always order something light.

Art