Meet aaduna spring 2017 issue contributors, Zavi, Mahnaz, and Quiana!

Zavi Kang Engles (photo provided)

So you think Buenos Aires on the western shore of the Rio de la Plata in Argentina is beaches, sunshine, great cuisine, mountains, the tango…and fun.  It is.  Let’s be clear on that point.  But there is a vibrant creative community that encompasses all phases of artistic expression.  Case in point, Zavi Kang Engles. Here are a few lines from her poem, “How I Learned of Other Galaxies”

first I blurred my memories

to render the cruelties impossible

then petalled my flesh

responding in the only way I know how

to

certain bird consonants and hand at small

of back

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“Minneapolis is the third-most literate city in the U.S. [and] a center for printing and publishing.  [In fact,] Minneapolis was the city in which Open Book, the largest literary and book arts center in the U.S. was founded.”  Now, you thought that this city in Minnesota was only known for the extraordinary artist, Prince.  Well, Mahnaz Kousha enhances that city’s artistic reputation and furthers the power and impact of words.  Here is the opening to her story, “Where Were We? Where We Are:”

Ali was riding home on the bus after two months of living in a tent at the mining site. He loved his job, the desert, and being with nature. The desert gave him an awareness of hidden life, invisible to the human eye. He felt its expansion and contraction, its breathing in and out.

            Mining was his first major when he took the university entrance exam, and he was ecstatic when he got accepted. That was in the early 1970s, when he was only nineteen. Now in his early fifties, he still made regular trips to different mining sites. Listening to the humming of the engine, he felt the bus wheels turning around and around, carrying the weight of the bus, the passengers and their belongings, their thoughts. He was carrying a heavy weight too, the burden of forgotten dreams and a marriage that he wanted to end after twenty-three years.

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Quiana Katumu w/family  (photo provided)

It is always a pleasure to welcome back a former aaduna contributor especially when it is for inclusion in an anniversary issue, which the spring 2017 publication is.  And it is even more festive and celebratory when that contributor has added a new voice and life to her family.  Quiana Katumu is a new MOM (yeah for her, husband and child,) who resides in Catonsville, Maryland.  Here is a snippet from her nonfiction work, “The Christmas Daddy Died.”  

It had been over two and half years since I’d been home, the Christmas that daddy died. Home. That word was meant to spark feelings of warmth, treasured memories and hot baked cookies, fresh out of the oven and all that. The Brady Bunch and such. The word attached to those types of emotions had always evaded me. Well, mostly. Overall, it was meant for somebody else’s definition of home, someone else’s life.

aaduna’s 2017 spring anniversary is ready to burst.   Launching soon!

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aaduna - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.

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