Posts Tagged ‘families’

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Cast of Wonders 519: Far From the Home I Love (Staff Picks 2022)

Originally broadcast as Cast of Wonders 509, 28th September 2022

Queerphobic families

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:00 — 44.0MB)

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Far From The Home I Love

by Y.M. Resnik

“Let me get this straight. You were born on Earth, but your passport is Venusian?”

The condescension seeps through the plexiglass barrier separating me from the visa agent. It blankets me in icy disdain. Chides me for having the chutzpah to think that returning home could be easy.

I nod in the affirmative, trying to still my shaking hands as I retrieve the required documents out of my bag. I’ve followed the instructions meticulously, right down to bringing everything in triplicate. Ari helped me prepare the application. They’ve always been more detail oriented than I am.

The electronic Siddur in my bag grazes my fingers, reminding me why I am here. I pull it out and clutch the worn synthetic leather carrying-case to my chest as the agent shuffles through the paperwork. I am half tempted to recite one of the prayers found inside, but decide against it. What if the visa agent flags it as suspicious behavior? There aren’t many religious Jews on Venus. Ari and I probably make up a quarter of that population.

“Do you at least have your expired passport?” The agent is fumbling now, casting her eyes about frantically as if searching for the lost passport. Well, she can search until the Messiah comes. She won’t find anything. I didn’t have a passport when I fled. (Continue Reading…)

a purple door

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Cast of Wonders 517: La Puerta

Cast of Wonders 517: La Puerta is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:54 — 67.6MB)

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La Puerta

by Ren Braueri

La puerta siempre estaba abierta. Just in case Javier ever came back.

But let me not begin there, because…if I started there – I’d have to tell you how it was all my fault. Instead, let me start with the day Papá brought La Puerta home. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 515: Little Wonders 36 – Halloween

Cast of Wonders 515: Little Wonders 36 – Halloween is a Cast of Wonders original.

Body horror, clowns, lack of acceptance

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:57 — 48.0MB)

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Show Notes

As I Wait for the Killing Blow was previously published in Fireside in June 2021

Interlude

by Christopher Hawkins

“It’s probably just a rash,” my wife said, though I could tell, even then, that she knew it wasn’t true. I could hear it in her voice, the subtle rise at the end that almost made it a question. Her eyes had gone wide, just a little, but the boy never saw it. He was looking up at me with wide eyes of his own, eyes that wanted reassurance. Below them, the tip of his nose burned an angry red, like a pale shoulder left too long in the sun, like a lobster left to boil.

“Probably, yeah,” I told him. “Just don’t scratch at it or you’ll make it worse, okay?” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 509: Far From the Home I Love

Cast of Wonders 509: Far From the Home I Love is a Cast of Wonders original.

Queerphobic families

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:18 — 45.1MB)

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Far From The Home I Love

by Y.M. Resnik

“Let me get this straight. You were born on Earth, but your passport is Venusian?”

The condescension seeps through the plexiglass barrier separating me from the visa agent. It blankets me in icy disdain. Chides me for having the chutzpah to think that returning home could be easy.

I nod in the affirmative, trying to still my shaking hands as I retrieve the required documents out of my bag. I’ve followed the instructions meticulously, right down to bringing everything in triplicate. Ari helped me prepare the application. They’ve always been more detail oriented than I am.

The electronic Siddur in my bag grazes my fingers, reminding me why I am here. I pull it out and clutch the worn synthetic leather carrying-case to my chest as the agent shuffles through the paperwork. I am half tempted to recite one of the prayers found inside, but decide against it. What if the visa agent flags it as suspicious behavior? There aren’t many religious Jews on Venus. Ari and I probably make up a quarter of that population.

“Do you at least have your expired passport?” The agent is fumbling now, casting her eyes about frantically as if searching for the lost passport. Well, she can search until the Messiah comes. She won’t find anything. I didn’t have a passport when I fled. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 506: Little Wonders 35 – Memories of Home

Cast of Wonders 506: Little Wonders 35 – Memories of Home is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:08 — 41.5MB)

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The Past Laid Out On The Table

by Matt Tighe

The sky above his mother’s house is the bright orange and pink of a frozen dawn when David stops by after work.

‘Mum!’ he yells as he slings the grocery bags at the kitchen bench. They slow to a stop in mid-air. A yellow lemon drops out of one bag and spins lazily, nowhere to go. No when to go.

‘Yes, dear?’

“Have you looked out the window?” David says, trying to keep the edge from his voice. He wishes she would just leave the past alone.

“Oh, I’ll put it all back,” she says, and of course she will. She was always good like that. Always the ordered one. Always the careful one.

“Do you have time for a cup of tea?” she asks. (Continue Reading…)

abstract mountain

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Cast of Wonders 505: And the rain will come from the mountain

This story was previously published in the Author of Tomorrow Prize Anthology 2019, Available on World Reader

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:32 — 72.1MB)

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And the rain will come from the mountain

by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

For my father and all the stories he told me.

I

This is how Papa paints.

In the evenings, when air collects at people’s feet in chilly, invisible spools, he gathers his painting things to the balcony and sits in front of a rotting canvas. The numb fingers of his right hand grip the paintbrush, and the aluminium paint tray sways on his quivering left palm. Papa starts by making a whorl at the top left edge of the canvas. He twirls and twirls the paintbrush, concocting a riotous mesh of colours. It does not make sense. It does not make sense at all. Mama has always warned me never to disturb Papa when he is painting but I still linger, hiding behind the torn brocade curtain in the parlour. (Continue Reading…)

brushes and leaves

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Cast of Wonders 504: Shrine to the Ink Goddess

Cast of Wonders 504: Shrine to the Ink Goddess is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:03 — 52.9MB)

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Shrine to the Ink Goddess

by Monte Lin

Dana Liu took her weekly ten-minute walk to what she called the Shrine to the Ink Goddess. Stepping through the copse of trees that separated the apartment complex and the storm channel, she arrived at a large, hollowed-out eucalyptus tree, split into three parts ages ago from a lightning bolt. She ducked down and sat in the middle, placing an empty inkstone next to her, and took out a beat-up metal food container with a warm zòngzi, the twine still tightly wrapped around the bamboo leaves. With her multi-tool, she snapped the knife through the twine, unfurling the leaves. She grimaced at the soggy bottom (microwaving never seemed to heat them right).

“Ahem. You know you shouldn’t be here, Dana.”

(Continue Reading…)

alien landscape

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Cast of Wonders 502: Little Wonders 34 – Separation & Connection

Cast of Wonders 502: Little Wonders 34 – Separation & Connection is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:05 — 49.6MB)

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Show Notes

Of Bugs, Debts and Distant Planets was originally published in Fifth Di… Magazine in June 2021

Of Bugs, Debts, and Distant Planets

by Vera Brook

The blue-green farming fields of Kenor surround me like a waist-deep sea as I sweep another fern, the bugs rattling like pebbles down the clear tube of my vacuum. One cold, alien sun hangs to my right, another to my left.

There’s nothing I’ll miss about this world when I leave tonight.

Except Jace. (Continue Reading…)

ysarin

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Cast of Wonders 500: Ysarin

Cast of Wonders 500: Ysarin is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:13 — 58.1MB)

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Ysarin

by Simon Pan

On days when I came home crying, my grandmother was always there with her song.

It was a tune friendly and old as the roads that crossed Mazael: the sort you shared while you watched the land roll away on horseback, or sitting at a moonlit fireside among familiar faces. I would lean against my grandmother on our rickety porch and breathe in her scent as she sang to the street.

Magic lay in that song, the notes so delicate you could tell a story about each one. As the beginning strands of music twined together, I would be transported to a place that let me forget the ache in my chest, a city of an entirely different skin than our Lenniel. A place of worn streets and thatched roofs wrapped in the smell of woodsmoke and fresh ale. A sunset, a fire, the sky on fire and the streets ablaze with torchlight.

“This is our song, dear,” she would say as she smiled down at me. “Don’t listen to the other children. We will always have our home with us…” Her fingers would press against my chest just above my heart. Somehow she knew the exact place where her spell took root. “Here.”

Even after so many years, that is how I think of home. Sitting there on that porch with the wind stealing my tears and carrying away the sound of magic. (Continue Reading…)

CoW 497

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Cast of Wonders 497: Hurricane Season

Cast of Wonders 497: Hurricane Season is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:17 — 20.2MB)

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Hurricane Season

by Avi Burton

Amaya smelled like the ocean. Most Florida girls did, when they returned from the beach with new tan lines and salt-crusted hair, but Amaya was different. The ocean-brine was under her skin, a part of her that was ever-present, unignorable. She wore jasmine perfume to cover it, overpoweringly sweet, but I could always smell the salt underneath.

We met at the beach— she always seemed to be there, sitting silently and watching the tides. I was crouched over a tide pool when I heard the slip-slap of her lavender sandals approaching.

“You’re new, right?”

I looked up and saw her silhouetted in the sun, smiling down at me, and nearly fell into the tide pool. Her swimsuit had a spotted pattern that made her look like the selkies I’d read about in mythology books— lean-boned girls with dripping hair and fur coats, who belonged to the ocean and only haunted the land. (Continue Reading…)

rural landscape with city in the sky

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Cast of Wonders 492: Stillwater

Previously published in Defy the Dark, Harper Teen, July 2013

This story touches on the generational impact of slavery in the US.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 56:23 — 53.1MB)

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Stillwater

by Valerie Kemp

Nothing ever changes in Stillwater. Nothing. I get up every morning at the crack of dawn, in the blazing heat, and drive our pick-up all over, delivering eggs and milk and whatever else my daddy feels like selling, to the good people of Stillwater, population 413.

I work my way in a circle from the edge of town, where we live, to the center. I endure all the little old ladies who like to pinch my cheek when they tell me, “Why Pruitt Reese, you are becoming more like your daddy every day!” Like that’s a good thing. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 481: Factory Mother (Staff Picks 2021)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episode 461 on August 11, 2021

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:02 — 32.5MB)

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Factory Mother

by Sid Jain

The mushroom mycelia sundering in the pale, hot fermentation medium reminded Hanifa of her apartment building melting in Old Delhi: when concrete flowed like lava and spilled her life onto the streets.

“Hani, you with me?”

Hani blinked twice. “Yes, Gary.”

She stepped away from the sightglass, away from her memories. She was here, now, contained by the blistered grey walls of Mycagen Foods, in Durham, North Carolina. Here, the air didn’t slough the skin off newborns in their crib.

Gary, her night shift supervisor, rapped on his handheld tablet with his four fingers impatiently. “We don’t have all night, Hanifa.”

Well, Gary, she thought, learn to wait as I have. I’ve been waiting to be American for years. We all have our vigils to keep. (Continue Reading…)