Everyone figured she would break up with him. She had a swim scholarship to that big school out west, and did he even get in anywhere, anyway? There were jokes he would follow her to college. Set up a sleeping bag outside her dorm. Nah, they’ll be over well before then, people said.
Graduation came, and in pictures he stood off to the side, unsmiling but just within frame.
You look like a Joan. That’s what Ciara’s flatmate Fidelma said to me one Friday night in The Round House. We’d gone out for drinks after work and Ciara had texted her to invite her along. Ciara’d gone up to get the first round in when she said it.
“Sorry, what did you say your name was again?” Fidelma asked, even though Ciara had only just introduced us.
“Joan,” I replied.
Review by J.L. Corbett
Writer: Riham Adly
Publisher: Clarendon House Publications
Release date: November 2021
Price: £8.99
“Nectar | Names” is one of the poems featured in Melanin Sun (–) Blind Spots, an upcoming poetry collection from Danae Younge (NFSPS Press). Melanin Sun (–) Blind Spots is a micro-collection of 10 poems […]
You picked me because I was
the best. The best you ever had.
I turned you on, you said, but wouldn’t
Turn on you. I could keep a secret,
Especially a good one, like ours.
I know you won’t tell, you said.
Too much integrity. Too chicken.
The hotel room was cramped, but it would have to do. She let the suitcase land on the floor with a solid thud. The air was stale, but it had never been more beautiful. Her body felt heavy, for the first time all of the energy from being on that constant alert had been drained from her.
When my mom was pregnant with me, they asked my older sister what she thought about her sibling still growing in the womb.
“It’s a girl, and her name is Jennifer,” she insisted a few times.
Jennifer is a very common name for girls born in the 70s or 80s. Even in the 90s we had two, sometimes three, Jennifers in my class most years.
But my parents didn’t know where my sister had heard the name. There were no Jennifers on her favorite shows or in her class. Her best friend at the time was a “Valentina”.
Picked it up on the tail-end of its zeitgeist, maybe.
My parents couldn’t consider any other name after I was born.
1.
Followed his friends
wherever they went
That’s how he found himself
in the barn that first night
Seig Heils and venom
Impassioned and celebratory
His awe and fear
Why he was chosen first
Branded like cattle
in what was supposed
to feel like belonging
Belief sown into skin
The following excerpt is taken from My Grandfather’s an Immigrant, and So is Yours”, a novel by Michael Chin (Cowboy Jamboree Press)
Take my middle school American History teacher, Mrs. Flannery. As we approached our study of internment camps during World War II, she asked if my grandfather would be willing to visit and speak to the class regarding his experience.
Idle Ink 