An Interzone (Chapter One)
By Nicholas Karavatos
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Nicholas Karavatos is an assistant professor of poetics at the Arab American University of Palestine near Jenin in The West Bank. He was a U.S. Ambassador’s Distinguished Scholar to Ethiopia in 2018 at Bahir Dar University, and from 2006 through 2017, an assistant professor of creative writing at The American University of Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates. At the Modern College of Business and Science in Muscat, Sultanate of Oman from 2001 through 2006, he was a senior lecturer in humanities. His first year as an expat worker was on the faculty of the Fujairah Technical School in the UAE from 2000 to 2001. Nicholas Karavatos is a graduate of Humboldt State University in Arcata and New College of California in San Francisco.
Translated by Louise Hinton from Simon Boulerice
Elliot loved clouds. He loved them all.
by Marcy Rae Henry
you ask: how many pictures will we take
before it’s time to give up the bra
by E. Hiroko Isomura
i’ve been tracing the shape of my lifeline through livestock-stalls and mud, grown foreign and faded.
by Rachel Lee
We have conversations no one remembers. Some months later, I break up with my boyfriend.
by Gabby Vachon
Defiance, but smells no different to the line of cattle
in the drive through
by Sarrain Soonias
im gonna kill him
people need to get to the creek where the adventure happened
by Willy Conley
They say that mushrooms and fungi are resilient organisms, highly resistant to stress. They have a fleshy resistance and can sprout overnight.
by Alexandra Tamiko Da Dalt
“How did you get here?” he asked, his face bemused but lined with confusion. “I walked,” I said, performing a caricature of walking.
by Sophie Elan
You step over rocks that shift your ankles precariously. Sliding on a strip of beached bull kelp, you see them.
by Fawn Parker
Hypothetically baby I’m talking in the ultimate rights and the wrongs of things. Yeah I’m leeching. Yeah I’m the one who’s squirreling. I’m poaching.
by Noa Padawer-Blatt
It makes the crowd joyous and the magician proud. He must commit to the trick until it becomes real to him, too.
by Brooke Lockyer
Not everyone on Lake Joseph is a husband or a wife. Elise, a retired high school art teacher, spends her days alone, painting male portraits on her verandah in the early morning light.
by Brandon Kashani
At night, Richard and Harriet would sip white wine over microwave dinners. The make and vintage never really mattered, as long as it was as cold as possible.
by Joanne Gormley
I ring ten times before letting myself in with the key she gave me. My sister Beatrice is in her bedroom standing at her full length mirror wearing a long black evening dress.
by Jessi Eoin
A comic strip on coming to terms with chronic illness.
Translated by Alex Niemi from Vincent Tholomé
I revel for three days in shaggy fur
I stink a beast and a bug
a cow tail whips my brow