BH.net: new writing from Paris, Korea, New Mexico and India

When you want something, ask.

And oh, you (shall) (might) receive.

1. We wanted more fiction, and thanks to new contributor T. Paul Buzan, we got it, in the form of words that taste like the sugar crystals on our tea.

Dragonflies on stained-glass wings skim over a lake. Their reflections flash like finely cut jewels on the surface of the water. Ancient creatures, unchanged for countless millennia, the sound of their flight vibrates in the air as a song.

Read "The Song of the Dragonflies" >>


2. We also have asked for more reviews, and voila, Elaine Tassy delivered her thorough Chennai-diner experience:

The restaurant, called Hotel Aakesh, was a hole in the wall neighborhood haunt that soon became my "Cheers." ....After a short wait, the server, a 20-something guy who looked much older, brought us banana leaves cut from trees and washed for culinary use. The banana leaves were dotted with a range of sauces and toppings that came with the rice, which was also on top of the banana leaf, served in a metal tin. Then he used his bare hand to plop a fistful of raw red onions onto each of our leaves. No fork, no knife, no serving spoon.

Read "Chanceless: Masala Dosas at Hotel Aakesh" >>


3. Tassy also delivered us another present in edible packaging: her sushi metaphor for practicing balancing postures during yoga:

When I started practicing yoga in the mid-90's, I was so irked with my clench-toothed efforts to get through balancing postures—usually T-pose, dancer and tree—that I pretended to need to go to the restroom when my instructor got to them. Mandy noticed me scooting to the door mid-class one morning and said jokingly, "We'll wait until Elaine comes back and then we'll keep going with the balancing postures."

Read "The Sushi of Yoga" >>


4. And the feast doesn't end there. Enter Farrah Sarafa, resident poet and food-lover.

Warm Pandoori naan bubble with sparks of Fontbrieul '01 in my belly,
I wait for the words to come.
Bare, plain warm bread, wine and poetry
Intra vein this here evening in Paris
where stark romance is as abundant as
the tiny squares of chocolate bar—
78% cocoa noir.

Read "Night Alone in a Parisian Hotel" >>


5. Sarafa spoon-feeds the fragile but fearless soul:

Seine-lit and wearing evening's black, he sits on the step behind
drawing pictures with his eyes
on my back.

Read "French Spectral Romance" >>


6. Just as Mike Marino serves up the spirit, cut and dry:

The western sun journeys high above the deepest of blue skies of the pastel paradise of New Mexico. A massive hydrogen and helium power plant resembling a giant yellow piñata stands in the town square in the center of the human village that has made "go green" the new mantra of New Mexico.

Read "Taos Music Festival: The New Mantra of New Mexico" >>