Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a907336
Sreshtha Sen
Diaspora Makes for an Unlikable Narrator, and: Shahrukh Says It’s The Time To Disco Sreshtha Sen (bio) Keywords poetry, Sreshtha Sen, diaspora, Hindi, Indian writer, love, debt, fear, government, films, Shah Rukh, dancing, love, romance, marriage, family DIASPORA MAKES FOR AN UNLIKABLE NARRATOR I have never desired to be cruelbut of late, something so bittercurls inside me—loose-knottedbile—with no place to go. Likewith everything, I name reasonsto blame: my sadness. my PMS.my horniness. the uncertain ebbof the future. I don’t knowwhen I’ll see my mother again soevery son who can, growsinto a menace in my eyes. Their joymy blight. I am difficult to love & desperateto prove this as truth to anyonewho contests it. The neighborhoodbarista’s fondness for my tastein hindi films was harmless but nowI find myself irked. Intruded upon.My roommate runs hot. Every morningI turn the heat to 76 & scurry intothe dark like an impish rat upto no-good chaos. Generositymakes me retch. A visa extensionis just another debt. All I wantto do is write better poems& who has the time for that pluspaperwork. My dad says we’re justgetting too old to not need help & I don’tcall again for ten days. Too afraid.Do you want to hear more? Ifyou say no, I’ll want to keepgoing. If you say yes, I mightcry. [End Page 177] SHAHRUKH SAYS IT’S THE TIME TO DISCO Except I am Shah Rukh. The waythese hips sway. On tabletops.In Ricardo’s living room. That oneclub downtown we swore we wouldnever visit again but somehow once morewe did. Everywhere I go, I am choreographedto be romantic. Everywhere, it is time.Sahar says heropanti is necessary for living.Something like how, in Bride & Prejudice,Kohli says “No life withoutwife” so I spend all summer beingA Lover. A [sc]amour. I marketfor a marriage—the kind of jobthat would have me a v*sa.I am looking to know howI will live in the future even asthe future itself begins to turn impossible.By which I mean I just want to seemy mother. Or that I don’t have it in meto chart a route or return. I mostly meanI am crying on the bus a lot. Let me not.Let me boogie—my heart a village—this seasona yoke how I stoke my hopes back into survivingbreathing things. Here, the sky. Here, it is timeto disco. Khisko. & when my grandmothercalls to tell me her brother died I—sweat-swung, music-thrummed—these arms splitopen to embrace mere air—Reader?I confess I danced. [End Page 178] Sreshtha Sen sreshtha sen is a poet from Delhi. They studied literatures in English from Delhi University and completed their MFA at Sarah Lawrence College and their PhD at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Their work can be found published or forthcoming in Apogee, bitch media, Hyperallergic, Hyphen Magazine, The Margins, McSweeney’s, Rumpus and elsewhere. She was previously the 2017-18 readings/workshops fellow at Poets & Writers, an assistant poetry editor at The Believer, a visiting assistant professor in interdisciplinary, gender, and ethnic studies at UNLV, and currently lives a
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a907337
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Pub Date : 2023-09-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a907332
Valerie Sayers
I Don’t Need It, I Just Want It Valerie Sayers (bio) Keywords fiction, Valerie Sayers, mattress, marriage story, feminism, relationships ________ I TELL RUDY that we really really need a new mattress and watch his mouth twist––he’s never thrilled about buying anything, much less a mattress that might take as long to pay off as a new car. The old one was supposed to last twenty years, and Rudy’s hell-bent on getting every last night. But honeybun, my aching back and the yellowing receipt agree: the twenty years are up. The first mattress Rudy proposes, naturally, is the cheapest one possible, so I promise to research futons. I have fond memories of an extra-lumpy futon owned by a fellow grad student, though the orthopedist grimaces when I ask if sleeping on one now might help or at least be OK. The futon FAQ page also says slatted beds like the one we own are bad for futons. So I move along to researching mattresses of the future. I make a date with my husband to check out reports and reviews and lists of guilt-inducing materials, to make a new budget that will fool us, or at least Rudy, into thinking we can afford the all-natural green mattress I want, made in the U.S.A. without a whiff of fossil fuel. Marriage: blood sport, my mother used to call it, but she meant that literally and I’m afraid my poor mama knew whereof she spoke. ________ EVERY MATTRESS I’ve ever slept on has imprinted itself on my spine, if not my soul. Our twenty-year-old mattress is made of memory foam, that unholy stew of dark-side chemicals. Who knew we slept on polyurethane? The first time I lay on it in the storeroom, blissfully ignorant of how the mattress sausage was made, I panicked: the surface was as unyielding as a lecture from my father. Or maybe that was just the kind of memory the foam produced. I made myself breathe deeply, relaxed into the mattress’s authority, and fell asleep for forty-five minutes, right there among all the other wild-eyed shoppers at the Memorial Day sale. That mattress was bliss for the first four or five years. Now it’s a torture contraption that sets me on fire sure as petrochemicals are setting the earth ablaze. [End Page 132] ________ RUDY HAS a million things to do before we can sit down together, even though we set the time, eleven a.m. on a Saturday, late enough for him to do all those things: rant about the cuts his editor’s made to his column; rant about his colleagues’ emails; rant about every picture Rosellen’s posted on Instagram. Rosellen’s just finished junior year of college (pronouns they/them/their). Rudy’s befuddled by the pronouns. He likes to gaze on the pictures to see what today’s gender is, but they always just look like Rosellen: dark heavy brow under a tangle of hair gathered up in back, Rudy’s full lips and bulbous nose, my too-long chin. She’s not pretty but she’s gorgeous, lithe and brown and stylish as a Parisian, arms bared to show off her only tattoo, a top hat: homage à George Sand, a writer I’m not sure she’
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Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a900412
Anna Ballbona, Lawrence Venuti
Abstract:In this excerpt, a woman reflects on her sexual encounters with men, most of which took place in a car parked in a field that belonged to her grandfather.
摘要：在这段节选中，一名女性回顾了她与男性的性接触，其中大部分发生在停在她祖父田地里的一辆车里。
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Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a900415
Rachel Stone
Abstract:In this story, a student leaves college after the death of her close friend and spends her time volunteering as an EMT. She reflects on how genuine the relationship was while she and her coworkers assist 911 callers.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a900395
Ying-tai Lung, Sandra Chen
Abstract:An essay about what it means to be content. Contentment is being free from constant fear; it's ordinary days continuing as before, ordinary people continuing as before.
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Pub Date : 2023-06-01DOI: 10.1353/mar.2023.a900397
A. Shastri
Abstract:A hybrid piece of prose interspersed with blank pages, which details the feud between rival poets Pishtaq and Muqarnas in the spring of 1518. The town mayor serves as match officiant, settling on a "3:3" format: three exchanges of three-line poems, where the first line of each poem was "set" by the officiant. Pishtaq's poems were met with applause, whereas Muqarnas' were received less favorably. The exact winner of this match is to this day unknown.
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