April 19, 2023
Three Sisters When I was a child, Kanta Apa was always turning down marriage proposals. She was my mother’s eldest sister Boro Khala’s daughter, the eldest among my cousins. Boro Khala had three daughters– Kanta, Shanta, and Renu. They lived in a large house in Dhanmondi. Scarlet bougainvillea draped the metal gate and plastered white walls at ...
February 02, 2023
Nicky Beer in Conversation with Day'Shawna Courtney Nicky Beer is a bi/queer writer, and the author of Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes (Milkweed, 2022). Her first two books, The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and The Octopus Game (Carnegie Mellon, 2015), were both winners of the Colorado Book Award for Poetry. She has received honors from the National Endowment for the ...
December 01, 2022
She Was Never the Birds Heavy bodies fall into me as the train brakes and then jerks forward. At each stop, it lets out a prolonged shriek like that of a fussy child. There is a map nailed to the wall that resembles the inside of the human body: green, red, and blue veins overlapping each other. Beside it, an advertisement that reads, rediscover yourself, your destination awaits. The letters are printed over an ...
October 28, 2022
You Can Say Sorry They don’t come home for all sorts of reasons. Some explanations feel legitimate, others courteous; some are downright lies, but what are you to do? My daughter Jeanie was meant to come home last Friday, but she didn’t. She called saying she got caught up at work and didn’t have time to pack. Her clothes were dirty, and she needed to put them through the wash. I said, “You know, home ...