The Question of Authenticity
by Tamer Mostafa
I demand to know,
the origin of cardamom,
rose water and coriander,
the moments in history
they became necessities
for our recipes.
Expecting an answer
of a chiseled diagram in limestone,
some hieroglyphic
roasting in an undiscovered ruin
that transgressed its way
to a flap of papyrus paper,
I am reminded
to stir a figure eight
on the pan with a wooden spoon.
In the process of confinement,
I inquire aloud about substitution,
the introduction of binders,
fruit grind garnishments,
the simple dusting
of confectioner’s sugar
through a sifter.
They warn of a testament,
a threat to reveal
the shame for innovating,
for wanting to invite
the strangers in.
Letter to Lucy Corin
When I was younger,
I remember
hearing
stories about racism
(and I’ve understood since the attacks
that racism is just
twisting
a pressure valve),
and I remember conditioning
myself
to absorb the abuse
as some form of pity,
to see the treatment
as proof of my existence,
a recessive nerve
captivated by pain.
Today, I sit in the car
next to my father’s dark brown skin.
I listen to his accent
mercifully trying to dissolve
into another language
he will never master.
How thick,
how hard to understand.
And I remember you.
On the Eve of Ramadan
No slumber can overpower me,
the waft of alcohol has left
my breath, the sins are toted,
a horizontal balance pole
held across my torso,
leaving one platform atop a tight wire.
I’m visited in intermittent periods
by reflections, an earlier identity
of myself, separated
like sheep wool fibers disentangled
in a drum carding machine.
I’ve sought to reattach with congregation,
display an innate prologue of survival,
the absence of food and fluids
for a protracted time period.
Won’t you die someone asks.
Losing patience for autotomy to manifest,
I dig the dust with my claws,
patting the earth
for the buried legs of an orb weaving spider
seeped in honeybee venom,
hobbled to exhaustion.
No, but I’ve been close to it before.
BIO
Tamer Said Mostafa is a Stockton, California, native whose work has appeared in various journals and magazines such as Confrontation, Triggerfish Critical Review, Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, and Phantom Kangaroo, among others. As an Arab-American Muslim living in Sacramento, he meditates on life with the reinforcement of family and the music of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony.
Melissa Watt holds an MFA from Emerson College. Her work is featured or forthcoming in Black Heart Magazine, Poetry Quarterly, Ohio Edit, Lunch Ticket, Visitant, Cheap Pop and elsewhere.
Rasool Yoonan, poet, playwright, novelist, and translator, was born in 1969 in Urmia, Iran. His debut collection of poetry, Good Day My Dear, was published in 1998. Further collections include Concert in Hell, I Was a Bad Boy, Carrying the Piano Down the Stairs of an Icy Hotel, and Be Careful; Ants Are Coming. Among Yoonan’s most recent published works are two collections of micro fiction titled You Idiot! We’re Dead and Damn It, Pick Up the Phone. Yoonan is currently the most widely read living poet in Iran. His poetry has previously been translated into Armenian and French.
Born and raised in Iran, Siavash Saadlou is a writer, literary translator, editor, and interpreter. He is the authorized translator of Rasool Yoonan, the minimalist Iranian poet. His translations have been published or are forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Indian Review, Visions International, Blue Lyra Review, and Asymptote. Saadlou is currently an MFA Creative Writing candidate and an English Composition teaching fellow at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Maria Marrocchino is a writer and producer living in Manhattan. She has lived in Manhattan for over 15 years and has been writing since the age of 13. Her poetry has appeared in Clockwise Cat, Broad, Belleville Park Pages, SNR Review, Main Street Rag and PDXX Collection. Her stories have appeared in The Sun for “Readers Write” and her travel stories can be found in Independent Traveler. Maria is a features writer for Dazed & Confused, Platinum, Nylon and City magazines. She has also published a book of poetry, Winged Victory: Transcending Breast Cancer. Her website is krop.com/mmarrocchino.
Sarah Blumrich was born in 1996 in New Jersey and raised in a small Connecticut town. An undergraduate at Stony Brook University, she is an aspiring screenwriter, novelist, and poet. She is majoring in film and minoring in creative writing, Japanese, and German. This is her first time being published in a literary journal.
Seth King is a painter and poet living in Brooklyn, NY with his wife and two boys. His recent poetry has been published in The Furious Gazelles, Yellow Chair Review, and will be in an upcoming issue of 805 Lit + Art. See more at 
Judith Roitman has most recently published in Yew, Futures Trading, Otoliths, Eleven Eleven, Horse Less Review, and Talisman. Her recent chapbooks include Slackline (Hank’s Loose Gravel Press), Furnace Mountain (Omerta), Ku: a thumb book (Airfoil Press) and Two: ghazals (Horse Less Press). Her book No Face: Selected and New Poems (First Intensity) appeared in 2008. She lives in Lawrence, KS.
Christina Bavone is a teacher and writer of fiction and poetry. She currently teaches writing at National Louis University. She holds a Bachelors in writing from Columbia College and a Masters in teaching from National Louis University. She is currently pursuing a Masters in English at University of Illinois at Chicago as a part of their Program for Writers. She has published poems in online lit mag Ophelia Street and international publication Every Second Sunday. In addition to teaching and writing, Christina is mother to a boisterous 4-year-old.
Janet Buck is a seven-time Pushcart Nominee and the author of four full-length collections of poetry. More than 4,000 of her poems & pieces of prose are in print and on the internet. Janet’s recent work has appeared in The Birmingham Arts Journal, Antiphon, Offcourse, PoetryBay, Vine Leaves, Poetrysuperhighway, Misfit Magazine, Lavender Wolves, and River Babble. Her latest print collection of verse, Dirty Laundry, is currently available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble & other outlets. Visit the ordering link at her new web page: 
A Pushcart nominee, Lana Bella is the author of two chapbooks, Under My Dark (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2016) and Adagio (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press). She has had her poetry and fiction featured in over 200 journals including Columbia Journal, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Third Wednesday, among others. She resides in the U.S. and the coastal town of Nha Trang, Vietnam, where she is a mom to two far-too-clever frolicsome imps.
Ashley Inguanta is a small-press author, photographer, and yoga teacher who has dedicated her life to helping others heal by developing healthy coping mechanisms. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from The University of Central Florida in 2011, and she earned her 200 hour RYT certificate from YOGAMAYA New York in 2014. She is the author of The Way Home (Dancing Girl Press, 2013 / re-published with The Writing Disorder on Kindle), For the Woman Alone (Ampersand Books 2014), and Bomb, which is forthcoming with Ampersand Books this fall. As a mental health advocate and queer rights advocate, she’s volunteered with organizations and facilities like Equality Florida and Lakeside Alternative, and currently she teaches healing, restorative writing and yoga classes at several locations in Central Florida.
D.G. Geis lives in Houston, Texas. He has an undergraduate degree in English Literature from the University of Houston and a graduate degree in Philosophy from California State University. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Fjords, Memoryhouse, 491 Magazine, Lost Coast, Blue Bonnet Review, The Broadkill Review, A Quiet Courage, SoftBlow International Poetry Journal, Blinders, Burningword Literary Journal, Poetry Scotland (Open Mouse), Crosswinds, Scarlet Leaf, Zingara, Sweet Tree, Atrocity Exhibition, Driftwood Press, Tamsen, Rat’s Ass, Bad Acid, Crack the Spine, Collapsar, Grub Street, Slippery Elm, Ricochet, The Write Place at the Write Time, Steam Ticket, Razor, Origami, Matador, Cheat River, Euphemism, Two Cities, The Hartskill Review, Sugar House, Literary Orphans, Dash, Zabaan, Clare, Panoplyzine, Boston Accent, Silkworm, Drylandlit, Permafrost, Gingerbread House, and The Machinery. He will be featured in a forthcoming Tupelo Press anthology of 9 New Poets and is winner of Blue Bonnet Review’s Fall 2015 Poetry Contest. He is also a finalist for both The New Alchemy and Fish Prizes (Ireland).
Lucas Shepherd is an MFA student at the University of New Mexico. His creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic, Aldous Huxley Annual, and Conversation Noises. These and more can be found on his website, lucas-shepherd.com. He is now completing a novel, West by Midwest, about demolition derby and redemption.
Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles, and lives in Boston. He is the author of Pink X-Ray, Big Table Publishing, 2015 (www.pinkx-ray.com). Twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize in fiction, Brad’s poetry and fiction have appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Folio, decomP, The Baltimore Review, The Midwest Quarterly, Lunch Ticket, San Pedro River Review, Off the Coast, Heavy Feather Review, Posit, Third Wednesday, Boston Literary Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, The Molotov Cocktail, and other publications. Brad is the author of three electronic chapbooks, all from Right Hand Pointing: Democracy of Secrets, 
Oliver Timken Perrin is a native of the American South. His poems have appeared in Bohemian Ink, Scapegoat Review, and the Negative Capability Press anthology Stone River Sky. Perrin also co-wrote the independent feature film Crude which received the 2003 IFP Los Angeles Film Festival Target Filmmaker Award for Best Narrative Feature and a Special Jury Prize at the Seattle International Film Festival.
Abigail George is the author of ‘Africa Where Art Thou’ (2011), ‘Feeding the Beasts’ (2012), ‘All About My Mother’ (2012), ‘Winter in Johannesburg’ (2013), ‘Brother Wolf and Sister Wren’ (2015), and the forthcoming ‘Sleeping Under Kitchen Tables in the Northern Areas’ (2016). Her poetry has been widely published from Nigeria to Finland, and New Delhi, India to Istanbul, Turkey. Her fiction was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School opposite the Market Theater in Johannesburg. She is the recipient of writing grants from the National Arts Council (Johannesburg), the Centre for the Book (Cape Town), and ECPACC (Eastern Cape Provincial Arts and Culture Council) (East London). She writes for Modern Diplomacy, blogs with Goodreads, and contributed to a symposium for a year on Ovi Magazine: Finland’s English Online Magazine.
adam l. is currently a freshman at Yale-NUS College, Singapore. he is drawn to the limitation of words, and how even in this limitedness, meaning and emotion can be conveyed effectively. he believes that all poetry is confessional, for all poetry came from within us; and the best ones are vulnerable and raw. at times when words seem utterly insufficient, he turns to physical movement in dance and theatre. if interested in interacting or collaborating, he can be reached at theartistadam@gmail.com.
Michael Penny was born in Australia, but moved to Canada as a teenager. He now lives on Bowen Island and works as a consultant on regulating professions. He has published five books of poetry, most recently, Outside, Inside from McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Belinda Subraman has been writing poetry since the 6th grade and publishing since college. She had a ten year run editing and publishing Gypsy Literary Magazine. Six of those ten years were from Germany where she was a Bohemian outcast among officer wives. She edited books by Vergin’ Press, among them: Henry Miller and My Big Sur Days by Judson Crews. While in Germany she also published the Sanctuary Tape Series which was a mastered compilation of audio poetry and original music from around the world. If you interview her about her publishing days you will discover that she threw out a whole Charles Bukowski manuscript because he told her to just trash what she didn’t like. THEN she found out he was Famous. She might have kept the manuscript but still would not have published it. (It wasn’t his best work). Bukowski, Burroughs and a few other literary figures did make it into some of the first Gypsy issues, however.
john sweet, b. 1968, still numbered among the living. a believer in writing as catharsis. an optimistic pessimist. opposed to all organized religion and political parties. avoids zealots and social media whenever possible. latest collections include THE CENTURY OF DREAMING MONSTERS (2014 Lummox Press) and A NATION OF ASSHOLES W/ GUNS (2015 Scars Publications).
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