Contributors

Osama Alomar
Contributor History

Biography
Syrian writer Osama Alomar is a prominent practitioner of the Arabic “very short story” (al-qisa al-qasira jiddan). Previous English translations of his work have appeared in NOON, and he has published three fiction collections in Arabic: Ayuha al-insaan (O Man), Rabtat Lisaan (Tongue Tie) , and Jami’ al-huquq ghayr mahfuza (All Rights Not Reserved) , as well as one volume of poetry, Qaala insaan al’ asir al hadith (Man Said the Modern World). The 2007 winner of Egypt’s Najlaa Muharam Short Story Contest, his work is regularly heard on the BBC Arabic Service and he is a regular contributor to various newspapers and journals in Syria and the Arab community, including Tishrin, an-Nur, Spot Light, al-Halil, Adab wa Naqd, and al-Ghad

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In Print

Vol. 80
Ways of Water
Spring 2023
Edited by Bradford Morrow

Online

September 20, 2023
The Rachel stands tuned  
            to multiplicities, 
aslant in a territory of longing,
            where she becomes foreign.

            What has she found?
She listens, acknowledges another sound,
            diffuse, multiple,  
pulsing thought, oscillations, whisperings,
            never only one.
September 13, 2023
I had yet to discover the source of that star, it came and it passed but from where it sprang and then fell to fading remained a mystery. In cycling its light lent its powers to coloring my tablecloth a lighter shade, relieving pigment from its duty to darken, except for those spots where I placed my bottles and cups, shielding only parts of the piece from fading, threads left closer to their original hues hewed to others abandoned as wraiths to their fates, a darker ring the mark of those who stayed behind.
September 6, 2023
Where the trees blackened, I saw,

Quickly, three deer lean into goldenness.

It seems, although wildfires rage

Out of control, this world remembers

Some portion of its first purposes:

Superfluous beauty