RR
ISSUES AND SERIES
SUBMIT
logo
mobile-logo
Home2023January

January 2023

"Akasha (Radiance)" by Laura Braverman (Watercolor) I. In June, a just-born bird trips headlong from its nesting bed. We feed the barely feathered bird with worms and bits of food stuck at toothpick ends, craft a makeshift nest from a plastic cup. On the windowsill, the fledgling lives. Sings a day or two-then stops. We hear the stories of Beirut deaths. Outside Dunkin' Donuts a man named Ali shoots himself. First, he staples a cedar flag to a record free of crime, then leaves a note in letters large and red: I am not a blasphemer, he writes. It's not suicide that it unholy-, says a familiar song, but hunger

Read More
Poetry
0 Comments

I pushed for an hour and a half, my knees pulled as close to my shoulders as possible. There was too much inside that needed out. The intern counted from ten to zero, too slowly, from the top of each contraction to the end of it: 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Each time, as I released my breath, he poked two of his fingers inside my vagina to probe for the baby's head, triggering me to puke more than once as he breached that border between a child's readiness for life and the pain of bringing it. Later, my obstetrician breezed in, threw one of

Read More
Essay
0 Comments
About Us
Rusted Radishes: Beirut Literary and Art Journal was founded in the English Department of the American University of Beirut in 2012 with the intention of creating a space for both emerging and established writers who have a connection to Lebanon.
Read more