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CHARCUTERIE BOARD – Angel Kermah

on March 4 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

The sunlight rises in sprawling waves through the pellucid glass and peeks through the shutters in my room, painting a plaid light fixture on the silver carpet to the left of my bed. The appetizing scents of basil and garlic flavor the air. Life continues loudly outside of my homely apartment in Bloomfield, as I lay swallowed by my feathery white comforter, twisting my ankles and finding comfort in the snaps and pops. If I don’t start moving now, I’ll start to remember things I wish I could forget.

Hunger is nice to think about. It’s easy.

Five flavors are necessary for a proper charcuterie board. My favorite is savory. Savory, like thinly sliced semi-transparent strips of prosciutto, or a pesto made of basil and sun-dried tomatoes. An umami, tender, impassioned flavor. The taste of resolve weakened, at the quickening of adolescent lust. Curiosity. Oh, how I yearned to know what all grown women knew –to feel what my body primed me to feel… Is this really what I want?

So on, there is salty. Think of the brine soaking pimento-stuffed olives. Think of the salt… from my perspiration. My eyes. Painfully squinting shut. Brackish tears sting as they roll down, down. Lubricating my dryness because I did not want to, and he was making me. It was supposed to be–
Creaminess that follows.

Creamy, like the smooth buttery goodness that melts into your mouth after a nibble of gouda cheese. Creamy, like the thick discharge that came out of me. Or maybe congealed is the right word. Something like cottage cheese. Was I not the only one?

I stayed while he used me, like a young girl does.

Acidity cuts through the curdle.
Visualize fermented pepperoni sausage, speckled with pockets of lard. Or the abrasive corrosion of lye-water inflicting itself upon freshly plucked olives. Taste the bitter tang of Kalamata olives on the tongue. Witness the pungent metal that flavors the air as I gasp for it. The bulging veins of my neck, rushing life into my brain – I can taste the blood. Why is he choking me? I am supposed to be his–

Sweetness that softens the blow. Sweet, like a butter-knife full of honey, rich and full. Or supple and crimson like a fresh raspberry speckled with seeds. This honeyed sap sweetens my lips. My cerebral oasis. Only tangible when reality is too cruel to bear.

Together these flavors are communion, plated neatly on a wooden platter.

The clicking chorus of locks unlatching on either side of my room rouse me from my daydreaming. Often, I remember what happened to me. I must continue anyway. Before my mind catches up with my body, I have already gravitated towards the commotion formulating around our laminate kitchen island. Seasoned grilled chicken sizzles on a skillet on the induction burner. Carly eyes the skillet intently while mixing bows of farfalle pasta into a maroon pesto sauce. Brenda and Gracen sit at the kitchen island, salivating over the delectable arrangement of meats and cheeses displayed before them on the charcuterie board. I draw closer and I see Zoe, back-to-back with Carly, grabbing a few strawberries dipped in cocoa. What is this for?” I say to everyone at once. I don’t listen for a reply; a realization strikes me: People that love each other don’t really need a reason to drink wine and eat together. I place myself beside my friends in front of the wooden charcuterie platter. We distract each other from our memories in this way. Like food itself, we sustain each other. I am often unsure of the love that I have had in the past.

I am sure that this love is real.

So, we all sit at the kitchen island, and drink wine, and we eat pesto pasta, and chocolate-covered strawberries and pepperoni and gouda cheese.
*

Angel Kermah is the literary and arts intern for Issue 13. She will graduate in May of 2026 from Montclair State University with a bachelor’s in Medical Humanities. Her creative nonfiction piece “Charcuterie Board” is her first publication in Narrative Northeast. Her poem, “The Flower by the Wall” appeared in The College. She is also a self-published writer; her newsletter Mahogany’s Murmurs can be found on the platform Substack. Her work ranges from reflective personal essays, intimate poetry, and speculative short fiction stories. Continue Reading
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THE FEMALE BODY HAS WAYS TO TRY AND BECOME CLOSED – Nina Smilow

on February 22 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I was very young when I was young.

All eyes.
Mirrors that consumed
the world.

Your mother told you
I would have to be careful.

She meant with boys,
men, eventually. You told me,
the first time it was a compliment,
it grew with me into a warning.

I don’t know if she knew I’d be pretty.
You didn’t.
I’m not blaming you.
I know she never let you forget
she saw you as a disappointing mirror.

I try not to blame me.

I will try not to apologize for calling myself
pretty because I do not think it’s the why.

(But maybe I would not want a pretty daughter.)

A piece of fruit
dangling, nearly snapping
from its branch, wants to be eaten,
surely. Could not be meant to fall
untouched, dissolve,
slowly decay until it meshes
with the deep earth and becomes
new life.

I was raised to be so polite.

But I am a body, which asserts itself
in blood, bile, salt, and tangy sweet.
Rude flavors.

I think you knew she meant
I cannot fade into dirt.

Nina Smilow is a writer of all genres. Her work can be found in Black Fox Literary Magazine, Porridge Magazine, Pacifica Literary Review, and Literary Mama. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA and splits her time between Portland, OR and New York.

Dick Pic [Elizabeth Knapp] & Yoni [Pamela Hughes]

on February 22 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Elizabeth Knapp (she/her) is the author of three poetry collections, Causa Sui (Three Mile Harbor Press, 2025), winner of the Three Mile Harbor Book Award; Requiem with an Amulet in Its Beak (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2019), winner of the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize; & The Spite House (C&R Press, 2011), winner of the De Novo Poetry Prize.

Other awards include the 2018 Robert H. Winner Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the 2015 Literal Latté Poetry Award, the 2007 Discovered Voices Award from Iron Horse Literary Review, & a Maryland State Arts Council Fellowship. She has published poems in The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, North American Review, & Quarterly West, among others.

Pamela Hughes is the editor of Narrative Northeast. See the masthead for more info. During their dual book launch, Elizabeth & Pamela read from their poetry collections at Poets House in New York in September of 2025. Among other work, they read their poems, “Dic Pick” and “Yoni.” in tandem. “Dic Pick” was originally published in Causa Sui., while “Yoni” was first published in Hughes’ 2nd collection of poems, Femistry.

The Summer I Was 14 – Penny Perry

on February 21 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I smell her cigarette-coffee breath,
my mother’s face is so close to mine.
She slaps Gentian Violet
on the rash and welts in the swollen folds
of my vagina, erupting with angry splotches.
I’ve never seen my mother so angry.
Violet stains her fingers.
Her cheeks are red. The Gentian brush
has little bristles that wound my
already sore skin.

“It stings,” I cry. Legs open,
I sit on the toilet seat.
My sucked in breath sings through
my teeth. I don’t know the cause
of the rash making my vagina sore,
think it’s just another new plague,
like my wheeze from asthma
that she says sounds like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir,
my constantly running nose, hives
that appear for no reason
except that I’m allergic to poison oak,
ivy, sumac, and 36 native grasses.

Before I remember, she
changed my diapers. Now
a high school freshman,
I haven’t even been nude
in front of my formal mother
in years.

“You did this to yourself.”
Her voice is a hiss.
My mother, who makes cauldrons
of chicken soup when I have the smallest sniffle,
dips the spiky Gentian Violet brush,
re-loading.

Years later, I will learn
that when she was 13, she had a 21 year old lover.
My new boyfriend is 14 like me. Chaste,
we only hold hands when we ice skate.
Usually so quick to blame myself, I look

at her blotched face, shaking hand.
I’ve done nothing wrong.
“Stop,” I tell her.

She has gone crazy, gone loco
like men or dogs who chew
the poisonous white Jimson weed.
“It hurts.” My cheeks are wet.
She dips the brush again.
My mother is treating my vagina like some
old chair she no longer cares for,
but is willing to repair with a spatter
of color. The hot August wind
blows in from the bathroom window.

Penny Perry been nominated for a Pushcart Prize six times, by six different publishers. Garden Oak Press has published two of her poetry books, Santa Monica Disposal and Salvage and Woman with Newspaper Shoes. Her poetry has appeared in many publications, including Lilith, Poetry International, San Diego Poetry Annual, Paterson Literary Review, and Limestone Circle. Her novel Selling Pencils and Charlie was a finalist in the San Diego Book Awards. She was the prose editor at Knot Literary Magazine for ten years. In the early 1970’s, she was one of the first female screenwriting fellows at the American Film Institute; a screenplay she wrote there became a film on PBS.

Image: ON BEAUTY – Vida Kazemi

February 20 | Poetry | admininfin8 | 0

Ode to the Vast Space of Sand We Called a Football Field – Isra Abdalla

on February 19 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

& i don’t know how to tell you about
how emptiness can be holy if you never look down–
boys building a universe out of a deflated football
boys that would be kings that would be gods
boys that would be pulled out of their
mother’s bodies that would be pulled
out of rubble & what is rubble if you wear a crown
for long enough?

& i don’t know how to tell you about
when no one knew the ringing of a gun–
boys who never know how the bullet lodges itself
into their ribs like it’s trying to make a home in the malaise
between life and extinction. i hope that nobody has to know
what it is to be betrayed by a city that extorts blood
to gold. that nobody has to be left behind by a city
promising itself into a homeland

& i don’t know how to tell you about
the irony of sudan being on fertile land–
boys that will be brothers that will be fertilizer
boys grasping at the holy cradle of a lying mother
boys knowing that the swell of a womb is always spectral
& you run so fast that you fly you run so fast
you barely notice matriarchal teeth sinking into boy’s skin

& i need to tell you about how
you run so fast you barely notice the tender tongue of
rebirth licking its way into boy’s bodies until they
meld into each other & you can’t tell them apart past
blood on black bodies & blood on black bodies
& i can only ask you to see
the light & see the light & see

Isra Abdalla (she/her) is a second-year student pursuing an undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature. She is a Sudanese writer and a certified theatre kid (with a minor in theatre). Her work has been published in Partially Shy Magazine, Catheartic Magazine, Healthline Zine, and her university’s literary journal. More of her work can be found on fruitjam.substack.com

how we left – Winter Yim

on February 18 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

 i slink from bed
& i drag my limbs
past your grey New Balances
& your slight cache
of a stomach,
your black inked star &
crescent, sternum
stretched & anxious
thoughts tear rings
off Saturn & i want
to  slow     down. so
my footsteps don’t screech
the northern sun
exposed floorboards
& inside, i weep
glass shards, my guts
churn butter & my legs
retreat into
the clanking of paper
ice skating the table
& i’ve seen you
so far   & i start
to write   & you
sleep in. your breaths
are the moments	
before a tea
kettle whistle
& already
are you thinking
how to find a way out?

Winter Yim (they/them) is an emerging writer originally from Massachusetts and currently based in New Jersey. Their writing covers themes such as home and belonging, identity, and queerness.

BORDER CROSSING – Tom Csanadi

on February 18 | in Creative Nonfiction & Memoir | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I could tell we were getting close to the border because my dad was nervous. He tended to get very nervous anyway and when he did, he became testy. Well, he got mean. As he drove, he seamlessly moved from bickering with my mom, to cutting her off when she tried to calm and redirect him, to spouting an occasional spicy Hungarian idiom, to shouting that it was all her fault and threatening my two older brothers and sister and me in the back with his almighty hand, to punching the dashboard and erupting in odd snorting noises that, in another setting, might have been pretty funny. But this evening we fell into our usual terrified place. He undeniably had his demons and he was entirely generous in wanting them to meet us, too.

It was 1968 and I was eight, already a veteran of European travel, this being my third trip. We were in our faithful VW in Austria and closing in on the border to Hungary. On our first trip three years earlier, we took the very same road to the same border crossing and felt the same fear. To this day, nearly six decades later, I still hold a razor-sharp memory of my dad, wide-eyed and pacing just outside our car, noticeably sweating.

We now saw the familiar barbed wire fencing and concrete guard towers: soldiers in oversized, forest-green uniforms wore military caps the size of our biggest serving plate, their rifles slung like sinister sashes across their chests. A border crossing through the Iron Curtain was an edgy, drawn-out ordeal those days. We became suspects and were told to wait inside a colorless, tasteless and unfriendly building – everything traditional Hungary was not – while they processed our visas and searched our car and luggage for contraband. My mom always did somehow manage to sneak in a pair of blue jeans, though. I also quickly learned that it never hurt to pass on a bottle of wine from the West to grease the bureaucratic gears.

Originally, my parents, along with my older brother and sister, were born into Hungarian citizenship, but fled the country in 1956. They found their way to the U.S. and in 1963, on the very day Kennedy was assassinated, raised their right hands and swore their loyalty to the United States of America. Forever homesick, my gentle, yet bull-headed mom corralled her four young kids and one reluctant and insecure husband to travel from Southern California to the home country every one to two years now that they all wore the protective shield of the blue U.S. passport. My dad was never convinced the shield would hold.

Twelve years earlier, in 1956, Vice President Richard Nixon was on a diplomatic mission to visit refugee camps in Austria that housed Hungarians who fled the brutality of the Soviet crackdown after everyday citizens staged a brief revolution that shook the Communist world. The Time magazine Person of the Year became the Hungarian Freedom Fighter, collectively those who made outlandish demands for things such as a free press, free elections and a representative government. Nixon was going to up the quota of refugees the U.S. would accept, referring to them as “young, the leadership type.” In 1956 my mom and dad and, at that time, their two young children met that requirement. In fact, they struck such a photogenic family portrait in that refugee camp that their immigration to the U.S. was expedited.

Now, by the time we ducked through the Iron Curtain and finally did get into Hungary, darkness had descended, so for the rest of the drive angling shadows cast by dim lights skittered past us with suspicion.

Pulling into the parking lot below my uncle’s high-rise, the emblematically ugly Communist-era concrete block of an apartment building, always felt magical, even if that magic leaned a tad dark. We soon succumbed to wails of grieving joy and the kind of Old-World kisses that sucked up a child’s entire cheek. I remember that my uncle was already downstairs from his 9^th floor apartment to meet us, and this time when he did, he held up a newspaper. I could see the name “Nixon” in bold print and then heard him say that Nixon had just won the election, and I can still taste my eight-year-old version of the clash of two very different worlds.

Tom Csanadi is retired pediatrician and is currently enrolled the Creative Writing certificate program through UC San Diego. As a first generation American of Hungarian refugee parents who fled their home country during the 1956 Revolution, he is passionate about drawing attention to the struggles faced by diverse groups of people. His view has also been honed from bearing witness to the full spectrum of the human condition during my career working with immigrant communities

TWO POEMS – Paul Genega

on February 18 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

AUBADE

Morning mist kisses
the slow wakening

shore, dreams skittering
wet sand, flittering

in and out
of sea murmur

until the sun
bounces itself up

from the gray
stoop of horizon

and the day,
aroused, kisses back.

STURGEON MOON

The August supermoon
is the Sturgeon Moon
named by the Algonquins
after the fish

grandmother brought back
from her monthly forays
into New York, thin slices
of white flesh packed in

wax paper, our faces
eager as Gibbous moons
as she tore small pieces
off the first exposed slice

and beaming her great
smile, handed them to us
a kind of piscine sacrament –
succulent, tender and ethereal

Paul Genega has published six full-length collections, including Outtakes: New and Selected Poems from Salmon Poetry in 2023. His work has appeared most recently in This Broken Shore and Orbis (UK). His honors include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the “Discovery” Award.

MONKSHOOD – Charles Brice

on February 18 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I wish everything in my life

could be as simple

as the orange leaves

on our service berry bush

or the purple plumes

of our monkshood plants.

But we can’t get in touch

with our friend, Lily.

She lives in two rooms

with her husband and three

children. They went through

everything awful to get

to our country where they started

their new lives in the land

of freedom. The lawyer told

them their papers would

be ready last month. They don’t

know what the hold-up is.

Today men in masks put

them in a truck

with no license plates. We can’t find

them. We don’t know where

they are. For them our country

has become like our

*monkshood—every part

of that plant is deadly,

poisonous, but

beautiful to look at.

Charlie Brice won the 2020 Field Guide Poetry Magazine Poetry Contest and placed third in the 2021 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Prize. His tenth poetry collection is A Brief History of the Sixties (Alien Buddha Press, 2026). His poetry has been nominated for the Best of Net Anthology and the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Atlanta Review, The Honest Ulsterman, Ibbetson Street, Chiron Review, The MacGuffin, and elsewhere.

The PALIMPSEST – Gunilla Theander Kester

on February 15 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

My mother tongue is a deceptive septic tank.
It stinks but also smells at times of honeysuckle.
Fills treachery with a sudden flight of angels
9
It curses and cries and breaks down on the road
like my grandpa’s old green Mercedes. Drops of gas
filters through it like raindrops leaving oil and mud.

A mess to clean or bury it has footprints on the side
showing everyone where to cross and how to count
the structure of colors and cracks in every distant corner

the hopes, the drains, the longing of stranded balconies.
And under it, the one climbing rocks for the view
who likes making other people use its power tools.

Below, below, the enemy language where the Dativ
whips the Akkusativ, their identities live to confuse
foreigners and students, live for orders and graves.

Letters parched and dry, pressed between the pages
of old books and envelopes, lists stuck in dusty drawers
left under an old flower pot. Debts unpaid.

9

Swedish-born Gunilla Theander Kester is an award-winning poet and the author of If I Were More Like Myself (The Writer’s Den, 2015). Her two poetry chapbooks: Mysteries I-XXIII (2011) and Time of Sand and Teeth (2009) were published by Finishing Line Press. She was co-editor with Gary Earl Ross of The Still Empty Chair: More Writings Inspired by Flight 3407 (2011) and The Empty Chair: Love and Loss in the Wake of Flight 3407 (2010). Dr. Kester has published many poems in Swedish anthologies and magazines, including Bonniers Litterära Magasin. Her work has or will be published in On the Seawall, Cider Press, The American Journal of Poetry, Pendemics, and Atlanta Review. She lives near Buffalo, NY where she teaches classical guitar.

WORDS – Claire Scott

on February 13 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

Some Yogis in ancient India believed
every person comes to this earth
with a fixed number of breaths
allotted by the Almighty. Once we exhale
our last breath, we leave this life, whether we are six
or forty-six or ninety-seven.

What if we each arrived
with a finite number of words,
say nine hundred million
which sounds like forever
but we spend about seven thousand a day
mostly drivel and dravel
and when we speak our final word,
the one at the very bottom of the basket
“fly” or “freeway” or “fuck”
we would promptly pass away.

What if we kept words safe in a tattered purse or
tucked in winter boots in the back of a closet.
What if we savored words, spent them
wisely, not wasting them arguing over
who last took out the trash
or how many angels can dance
on the back of a bitcoin.
But for sure take out a few for freshly
baked bread or a pot of pink begonias,
when a simple smile won’t do.
Spend two soft words: thank you
and notice how your step is lighter.

Claire Scott is an award-winning poet who has received multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her work has appeared in the Atlanta Review, Bellevue Literary Review, New Ohio Review and Healing Muse among others. Claire is the author of Waiting to be Called and Until I Couldn’t. She is the co-author of Unfolding in Light: A Sisters’ Journey in Photography and Poetry.

BODIES AT SEA

on February 11 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I want us Kodaks in the salt spray
off Cape Cod’s hook. With them, of course.

Lungs crackling, bones worm-holed.
Two pipers dance on driftwood,

their skeletons to be polished wood or stone.
Such feeble whirligigs, spun by a fractious wind.

I want us cosseted below deck,
captained in hammocks and dreams.

The hounds translate to dogfish, no more smog-
colored irises, beseeching paws.

Our ship trawls the Eastern coast,
Verne’s giant squid feeding, a monstrous hypothetical.

We could call it Death.
What’s invisibly certain and with that, not particular.

There’s a book of indestructible matter
in which we are all named,

snail feet embedded in sand,
negatives curling up on some implacable bonfire.

Tossing our chained hearts overboard to the jet-black sea,
our very monsters are tangled in a starry net.

Carol Alexander is co-editor of the award-winning anthology Stronger Than Fear: Poems of Empowerment, Compassion, and Social Justice. She is the author of the poetry collections Blue Vivarium, Fever and Bone, Environments, and Habitat Lost. Her poems appear in About Place Journal, Asheville Poetry Review, Burningword Literary Journal, The Common, Cumberland River Review, Denver Quarterly, Free State Review, Mudlark, Narrative Northeast, New World Writing Quarterly, One, RHINO Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, Third Wednesday, Verdad, Verse Daily, and other admired print and online journals.

POETRY IN CATCHMENT – Michele Worthington

on February 8 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

A word calls my name
others answer in rhyme from the canopy
where greenery is fluent and lemurs
with cursive tails leap

zigzagging in chatter
across shadowed valleys
of linguistic tributaries
from this babble
vowels fall and almost drown
mouth deep

I backtrack the primates
upstream follow
the verses they left
in whorls in the water
created out of
held breath
and wooden paddles
with temporary fingers

I scoop one up
it keeps its bowl form
and whirling movement
in my cupped hands
a blur of turning water
slowing,

letters precipitate
with sediment from a dreamt
existence
peripheral
to this vessel

8
Michele Worthington lives in Tucson, AZ where the Sonoran Desert, urban sprawl and our unacknowledged apocalypse inspires her writing. She has had poems published in Sandscript, Sandcutter, and Sabino Poets; an online chapbook at unlostJournal.com; and photography and poetry in Harpy Hybrid Review. She was a Tucson Haiku Hike and Arizona Matsuri contest winner, and a finalist for the 2023 Tucson Festival of Books literary awards.

FROM – Shontay Luna

on February 2 | in Poetry | by admininfin8 | with No Comments

I’m from incense, from Calgon and
cassette tapes. I am from the window
of my teenage bedroom; screenless
thirteen floors above ground, full of
mystery, night and glittering lights.
I am from crabgrass in the concrete.
Breaking free; the jagged edges
contrasting against the cracks. I’m
from playing Spades while sending
the kids to sleep so the adults could
party. From Cousin Billy and Great
Grandma Flora. I’m from expertly
hiding pain behind laughter while
making as few waves as possible.
From being too quiet and needing to
defend myself. I’m from church
services that induced starvation;
from that toddlin’ town and semi-
mysterious Cajun lineage. Smothered
chicken and black eyed peas. And
from the time I left my little brother
in the snow while going home from
school in the blizzard of ‘79.

Shontay Luna is a poet / fanfiction author whose first job was a Movie Theater Concessionaire. Her poems have appeared in Olney Magazine, [alternate route] and The Literary Nest, among others. The author of four chapbooks, she lives in Chicago with her notebooks, pens and fanfiction fantasies.