Yellow Arrow Journal, Anfractuous: Vol. VI, No. 2, Fall 2021

By Yellow Arrow Publishing

Yellow Arrow Journal is a biannual literary journal of creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art by writers/artists that identify as women. The theme for this issue is ANFRACTUOUS.

Issue featuring: Jesenia Chávez, Gabrielle de Gray, Nuha Fariha, Raychelle Heath, Christina Hoag, Keshnie July, Pat Kabra, A'Eysha Kassiem, Mary Ma

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yellow Arrow Publishing
• Release date: Nov 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781088008768

Book preview

Anfractuous_cover_front.jpg

Yellow Arrow

Vol. VI, No. 2

Fall 2021

Anfractuous

Yellow Arrow Journal

Creative nonfiction, poetry, and cover art by writers/artists

that identify as women

Vol. VI, No. 2

Fall 2021

Anfractuous

Editor-in-Chief

Kapua Iao

Guest Editor

Keshni Naicker Washington

Poetry Editor

Ann Quinn

CNF Managing Editor

Brenna Ebner

Editorial Associates

Angela Firman, Siobhan McKenna, and Rachel Vinyard

Contributors

Jesenia Chávez, Gabrielle de Gray, Nuha Fariha,

Raychelle Heath, Christina Hoag, Keshnie July, Pat Kabra,

A’Eysha Kassiem, Mary Marca, Caroline Miller, Shuba Mohan,

María Elena Montero, Mala Naidoo, Sylvia Niederberger,

Rebecca Pelky, Smita Singh, Rashna Wadia, Maggie Wang,

Kim Whysall-Hammond, Patricia Wright, and Yvonne

Cover Art

Susan diRende

PO Box 102, Baltimore, MD 21057

[e-mail]

Yellow Arrow Journal - Anfractuous

Copyright © 2021 by Yellow Arrow Publishing

All rights reserved.

ISBN (paperback): 978-1-7350230-8-3

ISSN (print): 2688-3015

ISSN (online): 2688-3023

Cover art by Susan diRende.

Cover and interior design by Yellow Arrow Publishing.

For more information, see yellowarrowpublishing.com.

We prioritize the unique voice and

style of each of our authors.

Every writer has a story to tell and

every story is worth telling.

Yellow Arrow Publishing

Homebound

Sylvia Niederberger

I’m a cloud. All my life I’ve been drifting. Drifting in and out of people’s lives, in and out of countries, in and out of houses. In and out. Seeing everything, feeling everything but never settling, never making real contact. I’m gathering things, digesting them. Then I evaporate into nothingness. I’m a shape shifter. People see in me whatever they want to see.

This lifestyle never bothered me when I was younger. I loved getting around, observing, being omnipresent and nowhere, filling the cracks that were forgotten by others. . . . But as I am getting older and my belly is filled with all these shimmering pearls, teardrops, dew, and muck, I feel weighted down. I feel like I need to touch down, to land, to ground myself. I need to dock on, find a soul mate who can hold on to me like a kid holding on to a floating balloon. Someone who makes sure that I don’t get lost.

When I was younger, I used to attach notes to a balloon or put them in a bottle. The joy lay in the act itself: in leaving little surprises, in creating little creatures and unleashing them into the world, leaving them behind, abandoning them to fend for themselves. I didn’t care if they survived or not, if they ended up on somebody’s doorstep, knocking, looking at them bright eyed and bushy tailed, or if they ended up tangled in a snow-covered tree, a bright splash of colour to snap somebody back into attention.

But now things are different.

I want to be seen.

I want to come home.

Table of Contents

Homebound

Sylvia Niederberger

Introduction

Keshni Naicker Washington

Endless Heliotropism

Smita Singh

What is in a Name?

Keshnie July

Open Spaces

Rashna Wadia

Wayfinding

Gabrielle de Gray

Fear and Hope

Mala Naidoo

All the rivers of the world flow within us

Kim Whysall-Hammond

twenty winters / self-portrait as a bat

Maggie Wang

Atlas

Caroline Miller

Belonging is Not a Place

Christina Hoag

Nuhpuhk’hqash Qushki Qipit (Braids)

Rebecca Pelky

Hammati

Pat Kabra

The Suitcase

A’Eysha Kassiem

Nature’s Fingerprint

Patricia Wright

In Which I See the Tiger in the Cage and Cry

Nuha Fariha

Four Quarters

María Elena Montero

Unfinished Stories, 1956–1958

Yvonne

Uprooted Roots

Jesenia Chávez

lineage

Raychelle Heath

I Decide

Shuba Mohan

At Last

Mary Marca

On the Cover: Desert Winds

Susan diRende

Contributors

Dear Readers,

Of all the stories we tell ourselves and others, the most significant follow the words I am . . .

We arrive at such identifications (signaling who we are and where we fit) through many routes either adopting what we are implicitly and explicitly or deliberately breaking with it; or more likely, we become some self-fashioned mosaic of belonging unique to our own choices and the intricate twists and turns of our experiences.

Being a writer was a dream that slumbered inside me since childhood. But when I first sat down to learn to write, a strange voice began to deride me: making art was not for the likes of me. It was an old voice, not heard since I was much younger. To lift my pen, I would first have to cast my gaze back at places I had long journeyed away from. Or so I thought.

When I was a child no one sat me down and explained to me that I was less than others because my skin was brown, it was just the factual bedrock of the world that I lived in. Watching the Miss South Africa pageant, I registered that these were the prettiest girls in the land and my logic deduced that my hair was not blonde, and my eyes were not blue, hence no one who looked like me could be pretty. The same sense of logic came into play with the national sporting events we watched, with the way my dad revered his white boss, with the fact that all the bosses were white. It followed suit that we could not go to the nicer beaches nor use certain