June 2024 - Rusted Radishes

Home is Where Teta Was

Photography

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Red Is the Brightest Color

My mom gnaws at her bottom lip, as though that might satiate her hunger. The prices have increased again. Standing in front of the open fridge in the supermarket, we scanned our options, which became more and more limited, as the prices flashed before us. I couldn't feel the chill escaping the open door. I wondered exactly when numbness had made a home out of my bones. "We still have some canned beans left," my mom said. At some point, she bit down on her lip hard enough to draw a dollop of blood-just resting on her bottom lip before

Essay, Non-Fiction

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After Resignation

Untitled, T12 | From the series: Home is where Teta was | By Mayssa Khoury This square room once consumed my days with you, on its other side shoving messages, slipping notes and references under invisible doors. We barter rumors, scoff at pond-dwellers, and praise ourselves in this place we name: The Spread, vast and full and poised. Set up and blame. Figure out later after estrangement, and break windows that block the actual view outside. Unlock doors, and wander into other rooms. I see no pond nor puddles, and we're not vast and full and poised. This is the land of breath and work, consumed with giving and taking and dressing up, putting on applause from

Poetry

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Essentials

Untitled, T13 | From the series: Home is where Teta was | By Mayssa Khoury 1. Simon appears in my headlights he is standing in the rain on the side of the road with his thumb out he shivers uncontrollably in the passenger seat the whole way to the bar where I drop him off for his final bender halfway through his thirtieth year he hasn't seen his crew in weeks he can't speak to his father his girlfriend won't let him in his truck has been repossessed his driver's license revoked his tools in hock in three days the blood will seep into

Poetry

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Household

Untitled, T10 | From the series: Home is where Teta was | By Mayssa Khoury everyday choosing not to tell the coworker she was in your dream; picking up almond milk & cosmic brownies from the drug store; organizing the silverware into their silent rows; renewing the labels on the spice rack; drying the clean sheets, folding corner to corner to corner; coaxing the cat into her carrier for the vet; everyday choosing not to tell the coworker about your dreams at all; unraveling fractions on the worksheet; picking up coffee filters & AA batteries from the drug store; throwing out the old rice in the fridge; rinsing grains

Poetry

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Essential

Untitled, T2 | From the series: Home is where Teta was | By Mayssa Khoury believing it an act of providence, those first few weeks we fucked through noon, played movies on the projector. i am concerned for my safety and will be taking time off. i wrote this naked, concerned for nothing, in love enough to leave the sheets salt-stiff. the bills in their envelopes. i was emboldened, blasphemous. would say, "your thighs are my N95" & while she laughed, i lifted her legs & wore her over my mouth. nothing was funny on the news, each morning marking a new high score. i was so profoundly sad, sad

Poetry

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At the Edges of Command: A Conversation with Neferti X.M. Tadiar

Neferti X. M. Tadiar is Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. She is the author of Things Fall Away: Philippine Historical Experience and the Makings of Globalization (2009); Fantasy-Production: Sexual Economies and Other Philippine Consequences for the New World Order (2004); Life-Times of Becoming Human (2022); and most recently, Remaindered Life (2022). She is founding director of the Alfredo F. Tadiar Library, an independent library, cultural space, and publisher in San Fernando, La Union, Philippines. My conversation with Neferti Tadiar began as a concern about the value of life in a changing global political economy

Interview

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Tuesday

Labor & Idleness | Main Page ◌ العمل والركود | الصفحة الرئيسية

Comics

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Abbad Alyousef’s Prison Story

Untitled, T4 | From the series: Home is where Teta was | By Mayssa Khoury Nick's father. The famed radiologist. The man whose idea of a leisurely Saturday included sipping coffee and leafing through the medical equipment catalogs that came to the house by the box load, peering over the specs of all the newest tomosynthesis models, underlining a few of them in pencil, a reminder to review them later with his colleagues before deciding whether or not to order them for the hospital where everyone called him Chief. "Machines, Nazim," he would say, tapping the point of his pencil on the

Fiction, Short Story

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