miCRo: “Lighthouse” by Kenneth Tanemura
In “Lighthouse,” work is inextricably linked to place: a place to which the speaker is a newcomer, with no ties to bind them to the landscape.
miCRo: “Ledge (ars poetica) (love poem) (true story)” by Amorak Huey
A prose poem with nearly breathless syntax and a subtle build of rhetoric.
miCRo: “Green Line” by Chen Poyu, translated by Nicholas Wong
Former contributor Nicholas Wong masterfully translates Chen Poyu’s haunting poem.
miCRo: “The Salesmen” by Matt Barrett
Matt Barrett’s story about knife sellers begins with a book being cut down the spine and builds to a meditation on the weight and heft of words.
miCRo: “Reclamation” by Parrissa Eyorokon
Like Jay Gatsby or the Lisbon Girls, the mushroom at the center of “Reclamation” wholly occupies the narrator’s–and, in turn the reader’s–attention.
miCRo: “No Babies Died in the Making of This” by Jenny Bitner
With candid facts and personal recollections, Jenny Bitner interrogates why flash fiction includes the deaths of children.
miCRo: “Loss for Words” by Asma Al-Masyabi
In “Loss for Words” Asma Al-Masyabi explores the links between trauma and the loss of language, connection, community, and self.
miCRo: “(perhaps?)” by Fatma Omar
“Father would guard the door, saying
Don’t go in there, your mother is busy
She will be out soon”
miCRo: “Time travel by train” by Amy A. Whitcomb
In this holiday tale we ride along with the inhabitants of a toy railroad through scraps of the narrator’s own family history.
Two poems by Saadi Youssef translated by Khaled Mattawa
Two poems by an exiled Iraqi poet that blend the everyday with the horrors of war.
miCRo: “Lunch Break” by Winshen Liu
Winshen Liu’s poem “Lunch Break” interrogates hunger and sustenance.
miCRo: “A Certain Love” by Soramimi Hanarejima
Naturally, we also exchange other tidbits about their futures that we’re privy to as the descendants of oracles.
