I was in my mid-twenties when I immigrated from Pakistan to the US, landing in Manhattan. Fresh off the boat, as the saying goes, I never expected to be attending a mushaira in New York, yet there I was, in the packed, smoke-filled conference hall at the Roosevelt Hotel in midtown Manhattan, giddy with excitement […]
Poems from WHERE HERE WERE WE
The Family Teeth
After our mother died, The Father began to go through his reporting papers and the heaps and hills of family documents kept in a large wooden chest from Mexico, locked with a giant iron lock and key. The chest, part of the spoils from their years abroad, smelled of candle wax and toasted wood. He […]
The Searchers
Back when Suez was a hot topic, it was the Gladiator of Tennessee vs. the Alabama Murderer, and my fella took a few blows but knocked out the champ, defeated in Montgomery, in record time! The amateurs all came looking. If you want victory, I said, you must train like him, eat like him, and […]
A Natural History of Cruising
* * An attractive figure rounds the corner. Is he? Yes, very. Your gaze locks in his. The moment dilates. Take in the hooded eyes, the aquiline nose. Zero the body. You feel a flush of arousal, a stirring below. Your pulse grows palpable. The mouth wets but you can’t swallow. * * […]
from True Confessions (and brief dreams) in a Time of Pandemic
Missionaries (1962) The doorbell would ring, and my mother and I would slink into the living room trying to muffle our giggles until, peeking out the kitchen window, we’d see the backs of their white short-sleeved shirts as they walked toward the street and their next stop. We’d been on their list my whole life, […]
Four Stories
The following stories were originally published in Fence #20, Winter 2008-2009. You can purchase this issue as an ebook here. —translated by Martin Brady & Helen Hughes The Blind Director Often he would sit there in the country’s penetrating sunlight under the merciful protection, so to speak, of his physical handicap. He allowed the […]
Post Vision©
Screen Shot is a space for writers to investigate the relationship between language and film, from narrative viewing experiences to Zoom meetings and Instagram stories. We are committed to discovering writers who use words as a tool for exploring the event of cinema, video, and the spectacle of our lives. To submit, email screenshotfence@gmail.com This […]
Excerpt from Whorl
The headache is the limit, the circle, the disk. The black horizon. Sometimes it’s a dull, red glow, soft latitudes of pain. Or a field of searing, orange craters. They burst open through the dark. Or, with a gentler hurt: tall, blowing vanes of magnetized color. Sometimes it’s still. Maybe then, it sleeps. When it […]
27 Essays I’m Not Writing about Elizabeth Koch
1 In April everyone involved in, or touched by, independent publishing saw a flare go up: Small Press Distribution launched a GoFundMe. SPD is looking for $100,000 to help cover its losses during the covid-19 crisis. To state the obvious, the crisis has profoundly disrupted bookselling nationwide—even and especially by Amazon.com, which has suspended and/or […]
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