Amuse-Bouche
Our regular and occasional Amuse-Bouche series offer little bites each week to keep you satiated between issues. Dig in!
Spotlight is a regular series published every other Monday throughout the year, showcasing an individual writer or artist. Writers Read is an occasional series showcasing craft-based reviews of published works of fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and translation. À La Carte is a curated occasional series featuring short pieces by writers from underrepresented or historically misrepresented communities and/or writing that engages with issues of social, economic, and environmental justice. Litdish is an occasional series of interviews with writers and artists in conversation with our staff about literature, art, social justice, and community activism.
Spotlight: Your Mouth is Full of Birds / Orchard / Penance
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Marci CalabrettaYou asked me once at dawn about forgiveness and I said
I didn’t think you had any need to be forgiven and you said
nothing…
Spotlight: It is leaving
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Courtney McDermottOn the first day there was stillness. For a moment nothing moved. The wind held its breath. The birds stopped in midflight—their wings pinned against the blurry space of sky.
Spotlight: Woman, Where Is Your Crown? / Self Portrait #1
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Carolyn EliasWoman, where is your crown? Why do you stand there dumb-founded? It does not abide in the swivel of your hips or the bouncing of your breasts!
Spotlight: Snow and Snow / For the Persians / Waiting With the Squirrels
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Tim SuermondtIt keeps showing up like a complaint no one has answered for…
Spotlight: The Least You Can Do
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Jessica SmithSince it happened, Beverly has been able to talk and think only in imprecise terms. She’s said there was an accident and the baby is gone, but on the third day she wakes up and the first thing in her head is the baby is dead, and this, finally, is something real she can taste in the back of her throat…
Spotlight: Against the Troubadours
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Ausias March, translated from the Catalan by Samantha PiousCasting off the fashions of those finders who refined their finery too far in passion’s fire, and reining in my own too-fond desire, I’ll tell the truth of what I’ve found in you…
Spotlight: When the Tide Sings Deep
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Molly MeyerDawn calls the haenyo. They return to the shore, the soles of their feet worn smooth. They listen for the ripples of pearls and urchins, sing the sun from darkness…
Spotlight: Turning Memories Into Cards
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Rey ArmenterosIn painting my memories, I turn them into fortune-telling cards—my own deck of cards, for my own type of reading…
Spotlight: Ang Kanta ni Lolo (Grandfather’s Song)
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Adrian De LeonI stand with my back to the bus shelter, my coat hunched over my shoulder just an inch more so my nape won’t be exposed.
Spotlight: My Night as a Dumpster and an Urchin, and Other Poems
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Derek Grafand I know you will not listen, you are like the cupboard,
but please forgive, yet again, my shredding, indefinite removal…
Spotlight: Reclamation
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Colleen LaddWhen I am three years old, I feel the burn of a cigarette on my arm…
Spotlight: Chipped Edges Crumble / A Criss-Crossed Sky
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / H.L. NelsonIn summer, Gram lazily waves at me with the flyswatter while Gramp chain-smokes Swisher Sweets in his underwear, wrestling always playing on the heavy wooden-entombed TV…
Spotlight: Scaring the Stars Into Submission
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Adam "Bucho" Rodenberger3:48am Sleepless. Not just for a string of nights, but for several months. Is this what dying feels like?
Spotlight: We Breathe Through Harmonicas and Four More Poems
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Monique ZamirThe anarchists must be somewhere says the orange man in the sun hat…
Spotlight: Monsters in the Agapanthus
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Jessica BarksdaleMy niece clutches the kitchen doorjamb, her brown eyes wide. Her face is streaked with something dark—mud, dirt, ash. Her thin hair is flyaway, thin, uncombed. “There’s monsters in the bushes…”
Spotlight: Chameleon / The Most Beautiful Thing / Uni-Love
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Carly BreaultI’ve found you Imposter Erect against the araceae backdrop Stealing your neighbour’s hue…
Spotlight: I Am Cold
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Talya JankovitsMy mother moved in with me once icicles began to form like claws on my fingertips…
Spotlight: Earth Mother / Dimensions / Me Versus the Dainties
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Jennifer J. Pruiett-SelbyMy earth mother told me to rub cocoa butter on my gray winter legs, and never fake bake with UV rays…
Spotlight: When You Choose Thor: The Dark World Over 12 Years a Slave
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Jason McCallTap into your Southern blood and blame Obama: A black president. A black nerd president. Anything is possible. These days, alien-space-Vikings seem as unreal as the Middle Passage…
Spotlight: A Pair of Red Shoes
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Dawn FerchakThis is a story about a pair of red ankle-strap shoes. High heels, of course, high heels that give the longest legs to even the shortest of girls—in this case, an Italian girl who stood just a little short of five feet tall, in the Jersey City of 1942…
Spotlight: Fragments of a Shoreline Adolescence; Heroes Tunnel: Confessions of a Working Class Slob.; and Charlene Comes Home From College, May 2012
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Christopher Eugene GrilloFrankie and I protect our town, on the scoreboard and at the town fair, still wearing our jerseys, proud of our colors…
Spotlight: The Feeling of Now
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Alison RollmanTonight she’s in a park, sprawled out on her back under the shelter of a scratched-up willow tree…
Spotlight: Gods, Heroes, and Saints Revisited
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2014 / Sarah HahnMy work is a reflection of past cultures, distorted by a mirror of aged antiquity, seen through a haze of modern neon lights…
Spotlight: Anne Boleyn’s Purple Gown / Anne Boleyn’s Cravings / Anne Boleyn’s Coronation
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2013 / Juliana GrayThe first time Henry left a purple bruise, I sent a message to the velvet merchant. His hands, the king’s, had touched me tenderly at the start, although his fingers were always rough…
Litdish: Mohsin Hamid, Author
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2013 / Interviewed by Zainab ShahMohsin Hamid is the author of three novels: Moth Smoke, a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award; The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a New York Times bestseller that was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and adapted for film; and, most recently, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia…
Litdish: Kate Maruyama, Author
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2013 / Interviewed by Miriam González-PoeHarrowgate is a decided break from the dominant genre trends, and as such, Maruyama is modernizing a classic form and re-introducing it to a whole new generation of horror readers…
Spotlight: Closing the Bar / Enough to Stand On / Letter to Youngstown
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2013 / Karen SchubertBacked up to our favorite piece of wall, we’re at Cedars the week before it closes and my friend says she’s been coming down since her bartender boyfriend snuck her in. So many Saturday nights of garage bands and traveling shows, lights and that sound that rattles the ribcage…
Spotlight: The Mason Jar
/in Amuse-Bouche, Amuse-Bouche 2013 / AnonymousI thought of my mother as I waited for the museum’s copier to do its work. I watched the green light scan across my retinas and remembered leaning into her, folding myself small into the space between her chin and her lap, feeling the raspy rumble of her voice as I stared into the fire until my eyes swam with spots…