Literary supplement 2016

Latest

Let Bashar be your guide: A day in Ramallah, Palestine

Maxine Dannatt • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] You promise to meet at the Palestine bank at four but chances are you will late and at the wrong bank. Start looking at the one in the main manara square and then move downwards to downtown. Once you find the right bank of Palestine, get in… Read More

Kalaam

Ralph Haddad • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] 36,000 ft. Somewhere over the Atlantic ocean.  I never feel more alone than when I’m on a plane. I never feel more impatient either. Loneliness and impatience, when you’re trapped on a seven hour flight with 500 other strangers is a not a great thing… Read More

Twang

Katey Wattam • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] Trigger warning: the story you are about to read contains references to sexual assault. Continue or go back to the main page The wind flickers through the window left slightly a jar, filling the car with the smell wet earth and rain. Petrichor–noun–a pleasant… Read More

Sleep talk

Christopher Junn • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] The heat of summer wakes me up. I sleep on towels so that the sticky sweat doesn’t stain my virgin sheets. Three hours ago I tried to fall into a slumber while my sweat condensed behind my ear. I dreamed, but only lightly. I looked over at… Read More

queen leduc

Micah Flavin • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] sometimes i say oh no in advance, right when i wake up, before anything technically bad happens. one example of something bad is if the girl i love with every cell i have calls me while im on the toilet and leaves a voicemail saying that she… Read More

Five Stages of Grief

Claire Avisar • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] Step One: sit alone at your kitchen table, wonder if his leaving her has anything to do with you, and assure yourself you could have fixed the breaks in the phone line with enough coats of blue-tack or two tin cans and the world’s longest piece of… Read More

Like dust

Niyousha Bastani • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] The truth about father’s divine law is written in negative spaces for in the world of being there is only a mother tongue that sings out of tune when slipping through daughter’s lips and a faith that swallows her whole then spits back out her blandest bits. Read More

Durga

Astha Agarwal • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] A note from the author: This poem is inspired by the Hindu tradition of worshipping pre-pubescent girls as a manifestation of the goddess Durga during the Navratri celebration of nine forms of goddess. Durga represents strength, motherhood, and the victory of good over evil.Every year I waited… Read More

Love letters

Hannah Khaleeli • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] I used someone else as a placeholder for you when I started writing this; walking home alone at 3 AM all the bars on Saint-Laurent doing last call I breathe easy, knuckles cradling keys, smoking on the sidewalk and promise that this is yours and yours only,… Read More

Navy sheets

Hannah Khaleeli • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] Mouth meets space between bottom rib / top of hipbones meets cyborg surfaces and (me)      Mediation Meets strange delineations Meets skin as a site of loss the body is built on precedent/passivity You tread minefields with yr              tongue [special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pfooter”] [special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”init”]… Read More

Butterflies

Sophie Panzer • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] Hannah is sixteen, and she sees her friends begin to change their bodies. Nature has already given them breasts and hips, periods and pubic hair. Now they metamorphose on their own terms. Taylor walks in the first day of school with her hair cropped close to her… Read More

Birthday

Sophie Panzer • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] She thought she would give birth in a world where Hawaii had been swallowed by the ocean where bear skeletons littered Arctic seabeds where sharks snapped in the watery remains of Miami. She thought she would have to feed her child in a world of plastic soil… Read More

Dust, honey, bullets

Alainah Aamir • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] To wipe the past three years clean with one swish like dust on a carpet but the bitter taste in my mouth weathers all kinds of storms. See I am a woman who can forgive anything except when you turn on your axis and transform into someone… Read More

Perfect imperfection

Jessica Goldson • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] Sensitive, strong Confidence all-encompassing; Channelling my perfect imperfection Until my last remaining belief is in my own worthiness [special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pfooter”] [special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”init”]… Read More

The Thread

Jessica Goldson • November 6, 2016

[special_issue slug=”litsup2016″ element=”pheader”] My  mental health dangles by a thread – weighed down by lost loves and the sparse foundation of my family unit. Fibre by fibre, the thread weakens from the weight of being. So frail is the thread, though it has weathered storms past, there is no way… Read More