Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction I. Sholay means flames. Or, it is what remains once flames consume: embers, small and glowing, wink and die. The line between embers and flames fades, in my mind, because the words, as referents in Hindi, operate within a script I do not comprehend and whose … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction IThe marina, with its flamboyant yachts and high rise buildings, is quiet at this hour. The hundreds of cranes are immobile. The night shift has ended and will soon be replaced with the day shift. I start my walk before dawn now because the heat in … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Nonfiction In a dim-lit corner of a restaurant, in a neighborhood where the wine was too expensive and the clatter of cutlery felt too intrusive, Tabitha settled in. Her dress draped gracefully over her promising belly. The air was filled with murmurs of conversations, a sporadic clinking … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Her shriek is raw, snapping all the world’s quietAs dreams, unborn, tumble into the abyss of almost.I don’t know this sound; an anguish that pierces my soul.With what little strength I have, I grab her hand,Weaving through the grooves of her sorrow,Though my grip is frail.The … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry. CW for biblical imagery and sacrilege. I waited all Tuesday [October 22] and dear Jesus did not come; I waited all the forenoon of Wednesday, and was well in body as I ever was, but after 12 o’clock I began to feel faint, and before dark … Read more
Joint Winner of The Letter Review Prize for Poetry Gut and Psychology Syndrome, Gaps Intro Diet Cookbook, The Good Gut Diet, and so on. I plunge into the flora and fauna of my stomach, cannot get the ocean floor out of my mind when studying diagrams on villi, microvilli, enterocytes—tubes and little waving hairsand cells that … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Short Stories. Features: Themes of violence, warfare. February 13, 2022 | The Before I leave Alaska for Haiti in twelve days. I will be in Cité Soleil, abidonville of Port-au-Prince. I find myself here again, sucked by the swell of opposing forces. I crave home and stability yet … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Short Stories. Features: Self harm. Most days I don’t like my brother, Dan. He’s bigger and four years older than me. Besides, he’s always saying he’s smarter than me, but that doesn’t matter anymore. It all started on Saturday night when everyone in Crawley’s Corner celebrated the return … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Short Stories Listen up, compadre. If you want to run a bodega successfully in the Boogie Down, you need to check your scruples at the door. See that upside-down milk crate by the potato chip rack? That’s a chair. See that cold-cut slicer in the deli? That’s … Read more
Joint Winner of the Letter Review Prize for Poetry We see so little of the world, a mere corner,they say, though today, nothing seems scanty—the oaks around the meadow, full of spiked leaves and fear- ful band-tails, life’s matrix pulsing every nerve—it’s morethan more: it’s a slow explosion, even if its plentyis mere sliver next … Read more