10th June Dahut Dahut Dahut. My name is a dirge. No one can bear to speak it, even Father. Probably he would say it was not his choice to name me. As if he is not The King. I hate this island. Sand creeps into everything—shoes, yogurt. The sea gets blacker and deeper by the…

most of my family’sinternational travelis being sent to warif we judge love wecan kill off anythingdragged by our hairacross the days untilthey make their wayinside our dreams where we get to evict themI want to thank the one who invented knocking on the door but no one remembers their name to tattoo across my knuckles…

Since the publication of his first book of poetry in 1994, Kwame Dawes has been reshaping the worldwide literary landscape. In addition to having written twenty books of poetry, two novels, books on criticism, and collections of essays, he is an actor, playwright, producer, broadcaster, professor, editor, and the lead singer of a Reggae band….

The White Swan hotel in Guangzhou, where I’d been living for a year while training to take over my father’s shoe factory, was packed every evening full of strollers and Chinese babies and hopeful American parents. Sitting across from the American Consulate, this was the de facto adoption hotel of South China. A Chinese girl…

Two of the things I will do on this train ride, I think, as I settle down in my seat, are look out the window at the scenery and listen to conversations around me, hoping to improve my understanding of spoken Norwegian.

I lean forward to listen to the couple who are sitting in the seats in front of me, but then they stop talking. I turn to my left to look out the window, but then the train enters a tunnel. I lean forward again to listen to the conversation in front of me, which has resumed. The couple exchange a few remarks which I don’t understand. Then, at the next station, one of them stands up, says goodbye to the other, and gets off. I turn to my left again to look out the window, but the window has fogged over.

Another pair get on, put their things down in the empty seats in front of me, walk away to another car to buy coffee, come back, sit down, laugh together, and start babbling. I lean forward to listen, though they are perhaps talking too fast for me. But abruptly, now, he has his laptop open and she has her iPhone in hand, and they stop talking.

Then three people, across the aisle and two seats ahead, start to chatter to one another, but they are too far away for me to distinguish a single word. After that, all at once, around me, everyone starts chattering and talking over one another so that I can make out nothing. Then, abruptly, everyone falls silent.

While this is happening, I think with regret how I could also have taken pictures out the window. There is one nice little shallow valley, for instance, with a white house, a red barn, dark woods in the background, a lake in front, and the sun shining on it all. But I have not brought my camera. After that, there are fir trees, a scrubby hillside, and sheep grazing. Then there are, between Egersund and Bryne, some bare, rocky, scrubby terrain that feels high up, and I think we are on a mountaintop, because I have no idea of the geography here. It turns out that we are not on a mountain top but down by the sea. I could have brought along a detailed map in order to follow our route, but I forgot to prepare one. It is less populated here, not really at all, even by animals—which I know are called dyr in Norwegian. The rocks in the fields are not so different from sheep in the fields. I could have photographed them, but I have not brought even my iPhone.

I keep dreaming about you & we’re kissing & this time we’re running rough through the parking lot to the party & Jensen’s racing us & complaining about how gross our cute is & you ask me if I’m wearing something sexy like a shark bra & I say something stupid like You’ll find out…

Before receiving her MFA from Cornell University, Ling Ma worked as a journalist and editor. Her writing had already appeared in Granta, Vice, Playboy, Chicago Reader, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere before an excerpt from Severance, her debut novel, won the 2015 Graywolf SLS Prize. Of the novel, Buzzfeed Books says, “Ma’s language does so much…

can’t help repeatingthe same song same what with what withcan’t help the same song with what clickwhat with repeating repeating repeatinghelp click click what with what withwhat with click can’t They came to call on us a group of them they were persistent some had no beaks just a rough-looking raised part where the hard…

Nine months before she died, my two brothers and I relocated my mother, Mollie, then ninety-three, into an assisted living facility, near enough to her old neighborhood so that her children and few remaining friends could easily come and see her.To be honest, it was sometimes a struggle to visit my mother. Not just because…

Dedicated to the fusion of art and advocacy, Writers Without Margins takes literature beyond conventional spaces. Our mission is to expand access to the literary arts for under-resourced communities in Greater Boston—including those isolated by the challenges of addiction recovery, trauma, poverty, disability, and mental illness—through free, collaborative, creative writing workshops, public readings, and publication…

There has been a blight about this island. Grain has ceased growing; livestock no longer breeds. Fields lie flat and the hills are barren, devoid of new life. As the last of the mature animals are slaughtered and rationed out, the future holds a horrifying uncertainty.The people are reaching desperation. Angry seas have kept them…