Winter 2010 Issue

Excerpts from the Winter 2010 issue:

Grace Dominion - Fiction by Clive Young

I was running around with some tough kids, and although there was no real leader, I guess it was me since I got blamed for most of the stuff we did--probably because I thought of it. At school, sometimes you d hear the teachers whisper stuff like children at risk and troubled youth; now and then, another kid would use the word dirt bags to our faces (usually just before he got his ass kicked), but the coaches, they cut to the chase. They called us fuck- ups and they were right.

The Vulture - Fiction by Abha Iyengar

Walking up to the bar, I ordered a draught of beer and perched myself on one of the rickety stools. I drank the beer and waited. I lit a cigarette, and my red nails caught the light filtering in through a chink in the window. I knew I was the cynosure of all eyes there; my tight blouse and slit skirt were meant to grab attention.

The man seated in the far corner was watching me. I had felt his eyes rake me even as I had arranged my flesh to the greatest advantage on the barstool. Come and get it, it screamed.

Post Slumdog Millionairism - Article by Meenakshi Thirukode

Globalization has made everything and everybody more accessible but it hasn't done much to change pre- conditioned ideas about each other. For instance, you could sit in one part of the world and curate a show in another, with artists who come from 3 different time zones thanks to iPhones, Blackberries and/or laptops. However Globalization doesn't mean the contexts to understand and develop a critical dialog have changed.

Poetry in Nine Rounds I, II - Poem by Enzo Surin

old-laced Converses perform a high wire act
on the avenue, an anthology's written in their fade.
laughter on the corner vibrates like the bass in a drum.
outside Papi's Bodega, a chromed-wheel Escalade
multiplies the ghost of Tupac Shakur from its speakers:
I wonder if heaven's got a ghetto.
the night drowns in a native glare, suffocating
this thug air, and lays down bereft of memories.