Articles

For the rice, you will need jasmine rice [Maram brought me a twenty-pound bag of rice from Sunrise market after all the other supermarkets ran out.], water, two tablespoons of oil, salt, a bowl, a colander, a pot with a lid and a large spoon. You can use sunflower oil. Coconut oil. Peanut oil. [I have a half-jar of coconut oil on the counter from when the state of Oregon shut down.]

The Nourishing Gourmet’s Golden Turmeric Sipping Broth is the only kind of recipe I can manage these days, the throw-everything-in-at-once kind, the kind that doesn’t care if I’m particular in my measurements, the kind that will end up colorful and comforting without me having to focus for more than a minute.

I drink it alone because I live with myself and no one else. And no one else is allowed to come over or at least that’s how we all feel, or at least not for the frivolity of an unnecessarily fussed-over cocktail, thick and sweet and frothy.

Right now, our country faces a crisis of mass incarceration. With five percent of the world’s population, we have twenty-five percent of the world’s incarcerated people.  The majority of these are held not in the federal prison system but in local facilities—jails.

I used to keep journals as a child, like we all have, and I wrote silly short stories or plays. I did not take writing seriously as a career, pathway, or even hobby until my sophomore year of college when, on a whim, I changed my major to Creative Writing.

Ours, it turns out,
was neither the world
as will, nor reverie—

engines full throttle,
instinct the piston,
strife the fuel.

Welcome to Bellingham Review’s Issue 81, our tenth annual online issue! Inside you will find the stunning work of sixteen different artists including writers of nonfiction, fiction, hybrid, and poetry.

We were traveling in Melbourne Australia back in January of 2018. The location was at the entrance to the Melbourne Museum of Art. The image was made looking through a window that had water running down on the outside.

My mother asked me to stop by the house to meet the latest arrivals. It was Saturday night and, having recently moved back to the Bay Area, I didn’t have any plans. I got there just as they were sitting down to dinner.

When it’s over, I wash
prayers and curses out of my hair.
I stuff them into a pillow.
I sleep.
There are no dreams.
I’m not haunted by the lives I take.