Project MUSE®: Cream City Review - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Cream City Review.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 36 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Cream City ReviewTWOProject MUSE®Cream City Review2166-014x0884-3457Latest articles in Cream City Review. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The Indictment: Originally appeared in 1.3
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978209
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In the hospital.That small room.Green.Everything green and chrome.Or white.The nurses.Uniforms.Their faces.All white.The doctor came in followed by a white figure carrying a chrome lamp. The light burning white outlined the doctor. He stood at her feet and told her to draw her legs up as close as she could. Not very close. The belly was in her way. It had been in her way for too long.Another painShe closed her eyes.Grey outlined in red.And another pain.The doctor’s voice was white when her eyes were open but when she had a pain, when the cringe came, again and again, his voice turned to metal. She opened her eyes to his voice and was blinded by the light. A nurse saw the hands moving over her tired eyes and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Indictment: Originally appeared in 1.32025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Indictment: Originally appeared in 1.32025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®91162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20from the editors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978210
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There is a lot to be said about fifty years. In the scheme of a literary landscape, it is many, many generations, but cream city review’s ethos remains young, vibrant, and contemporary. In these pages is witnessed the tides of many passing eras, trends come and gone, narratives both emerging and seasoned.Since its founding by Mary Zane Allan in 1975, cream city review has sought to be a reflection of literary culture. The works published, like our namesake bricks, wear their time. Cream City bricks were once prized for their bright, porous clay fired to a pale gold. Over time, those bricks darkened. They absorbed smoke, soot, and the city’s breath, holding on their surface the record of everything the city has
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallfrom the editors2025-12-20text/htmlen-USfrom the editors2025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®48992026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Legacy: Originally appeared in 21.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978214
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The hunchback took in the pregnant girl to hide her from high school until the baby popped out. He was her step-uncle, step-mother’s side, lived in a castle with a butler and several spoiled cats. Her parents, disturbed by the predicament, brewed over the problem until her father came up with the brilliant idea: That castle! Your weird brother! Wanting nothing more to do with their daughter, they placed her on a castle-bound train with a suitcase of wide-waisted dresses and a thank-you fern.Chin brave, the girl ascended the four hundred stairs over the moat and decided she liked the view of the garden from her bedroom. The butler threw out the fem. She held her belly in her arms and bounced with it while the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallLegacy: Originally appeared in 21.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USLegacy: Originally appeared in 21.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®63192026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Family Ties: Originally appeared 20.1&2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978219
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Everyone says Inder is the smart one and I the steady one. I know steady means boring but it doesn’t matter; he’s my brother. He’s the thin one, and I’m the one Mummy calls Fatty. He’s the one with laughter and he always asks why. “Why?” is a question Mummy takes as a personal affront, but Inder asks it over and over. Why can’t we live in Indore with Dad? Or in Darjeeling with old Bibiji and Nana? Why can’t we play Gulli Danda with the big-eyed, bandy-legged jhuggi children? Why doesn’t Mummy allow him to sing like Rajesh Khanna in the films—winking at girls, with his right hand twirling in time to the music?I am ten and he is fourteen and he challenges me to play mental chess through the mosquito nets separating
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallFamily Ties: Originally appeared 20.1&22025-12-20text/htmlen-USFamily Ties: Originally appeared 20.1&22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®334872026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20The Banana Parable: Originally appeared in 13.1
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978220
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For twenty years now, getting away from carcinogenic and cholesterolic bacon and eggs most mornings, I’ve been having cereal for breakfast. I like to slice a banana into my cereal, too.For a couple of years I’d peel the banana and slice. I like thin slices best, but sometimes hunks of the banana would come off (especially during the lush summer months) and I’d later have to slice these hunks up with my spoon in the cereal. A spoon, of course, is not handy for slicing, but I like a little bit of banana with each spoonful of cereal, so I’d try to slice the too-big hunks with my spoon.Then, one day, before slicing a banana into my cereal—I’m not sure what made me do this—I sliced the whole banana in half, lengthwise
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Banana Parable: Originally appeared in 13.12025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Banana Parable: Originally appeared in 13.12025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®58202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20The Man Who Could Not Forget: Originally appeared in 30.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978224
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Sherevsky was the man who could not forget. In The Mind of a Mnemonist, the Russian neuropsychologist Alexander Luria referred to his patient simply as S. A man with so many memories, reduced to a single letter.What did S. remember? Every word of every conversation, stretching back into childhood. Every meal he had eaten, every sound he had heard, every feature of every face he encountered. While amnesiacs have no ability to remember, S. suffered the impossibility of forgetting. Any page of text, any conversation, was a mine field; a single word would cause an avalanche of memories that made it impossible to complete his train of thought.Imagine a street in any city, on any given day. Now, imagine that a walk down
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Man Who Could Not Forget: Originally appeared in 30.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Man Who Could Not Forget: Originally appeared in 30.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®40202026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Green Glass: Originally appeared in 4.2&3
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978228
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He was outside blowing his horn. My bed was covered with blouses, skirts, and dresses that I had tried on and decided not to wear. I would have to put them back in the drawers when I came home. He blew his horn again.I walked through the studio past the unfinished picture on the easel. I had wanted to paint a stump sticking out of thorns, the sky still flickering with grey gleams of a storm. It was a scene that made me think of pain; I could feel the sharp-edged stump inside my heart as if it had jumped right into my body. The pigment had gone dry on the palette. I would make more money if I painted daffodils and sunsets over the water to be hung up in living rooms. Only a few of my pictures ever got sold.Hearing
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallGreen Glass: Originally appeared in 4.2&32025-12-20text/htmlen-USGreen Glass: Originally appeared in 4.2&32025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®239272026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20The Blue Turtle Parable Slam (Under Development): Originally appeared in 27.1
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978233
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And small print beneath each announcement read:Rules:Each author must petition for entry and from those petitions the most notable seven will be selected.Each speaker must draw a piece of yarn to determine the order of speakers.Each speaker may take as long as he or she wantsEach speaker may use only skin notes.The best oral invention to be determined by an audience of twelve selected Native judges, including politicians, legal experts, sovereignty development specialists, visual, plastic and musical artists, spiritual leaders and activists on every front.Rewards:Ownership of a Blue Turtle Casino slot machine—its profits for one year.A Lifetime publishing contract with newly formed Blue Turtle Press.Immortality—a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Blue Turtle Parable Slam (Under Development): Originally appeared in 27.12025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Blue Turtle Parable Slam (Under Development): Originally appeared in 27.12025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®279332026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20The Sound of an Imitated Ocean: Originally appeared in 43.1
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978236
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If I sat you in a dark room, placed my open palms on the surface of an unfolded bath towel, and ran them up and down the fabric like I’m stretching bread dough, you’d identify the breaking of waves, the organic rhythm of the static-filled ooooo-shhhh, and say it sounds like the ocean. Like foamy saltwater thinning out on the sand before retreating, the fixed vowel—the ooooo-shhhh—even tapers in volume as I slide my hands back across the towel towards my body.I know this because I’ve heard it before.First, I draped the towel over my kitchen table. I moved a chair aside and stood there with my eyes closed, trying not to think. The house was empty; the only noise was the refrigerator, which was barely humming. But
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Sound of an Imitated Ocean: Originally appeared in 43.12025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Sound of an Imitated Ocean: Originally appeared in 43.12025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®267432026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Bringing Bato: Originally appeared in 22.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978239
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Teenage boys strip-search me. They wear camouflage jackets and tall black boots. They signal for me to step out of my sandals, pull my dress over my head, loosen my hair so they can examine the thick rubber band that holds it back. They step around me surprised. They think I’m pregnant. Estás con bebe? one asks. He doesn’t know where to put his eyes: my face, body, anywhere might make him blush. He hopes I’m pregnant so he and his comrades can cry, Qué linda! and tuck me back into my flower patterned dress. They could pat my stomach and beam at me, a little mama. They could set their safeties, pile their machine guns on the concrete. The smallest one could tug an overripe banana from a pocket and offer it like an
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallBringing Bato: Originally appeared in 22.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USBringing Bato: Originally appeared in 22.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®321352026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20A Place to Live and Die In: Originally appeared in 30.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978242
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When my father first saw my mother he was sitting at the St. Thomas airport canteen still in his pilot uniform. She recognized him from earlier; he’d wedged the cockpit door open and she’d stared at the silver and black controls—only seeing him at the corner of her eye. Kweku didn’t remember her, which was odd because he usually remembered female passengers. To him she looked only severe. And scrawny. Her big afro pulled back in one puff, poking out defiantly at fierce angles, because she wasn’t used to the Virgin Islands’ heat after years abroad. Lorraine walked with her back unusually straight, though she looked suddenly old, as if life on the plane had been demanding to her body. As she walked towards him she
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallA Place to Live and Die In: Originally appeared in 30.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USA Place to Live and Die In: Originally appeared in 30.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®324932026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20The Virginity of Famous Men: Originally appeared in 31.1
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978243
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Like baby teeth, the burst appendix, the swollen spleen—something to be rooted out in the rush to better things.“I wish that with each new partner, we could become virgins again,” said one famous man. “That way there’d be less confusion.”Others did not agree. A second famous man declared that he thought of his many partners, past and present, in the same way he thought of books—when he read a new one, he didn’t want to forget all of the others that had gone before.A third famous man had another point of view: “It’d be nice if I could relive each one of my encounters and decide what I think now, with these years of painstaking experience. There would probably be some revisions. No hard feelings though.”He smiled at
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallThe Virginity of Famous Men: Originally appeared in 31.12025-12-20text/htmlen-USThe Virginity of Famous Men: Originally appeared in 31.12025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®133882026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Lucky: Originally appeared in 33.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978244
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Occasionally I’d wake to the sound of a hot air balloon passing over the house, a short snarl of flame followed by a long, cool gap of silence, and once, while everyone was still sleeping, I got on my bike and followed to where one landed in a field across the highway, where I stood at the edge and watched the huge, austere bulb touch down and the passengers, a boy and his father, climb out of the basket and the crew deflate the envelope, where after an hour or so, just as I’d hoped—just as I’d been hoping— someone called me over to help fold the fabric. It was nothing like I thought it’d be. It was a lot of waiting and then being spoken to brusquely by men who were not my father. It did bring about a great feeling
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallLucky: Originally appeared in 33.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USLucky: Originally appeared in 33.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®30092026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20While Dorothy Sleeps, Tin Woodman Visits WebMD: Originally appeared in 47.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978246
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Point to where it hurts. Point to the place on this illustration of a humanoid body where you are experiencing symptoms. Never mind that our body lacks your rivets, metallic carapace, flanged joints. It’s close enough for a quick diagnosis, and we understand your rush, when tomorrow Oz, the Great and Terrible, claims he will bestow upon you that which you most desire.This selected area of the chest—central, slightly to the left—houses the heart, of course. Normally, that is. In almost all cases, the heart is present, which is usually the problem. Its absence, too, is a common though lesser complication.To refine your diagnosis, select applicable symptoms:NumbnessLack of sensationLack of capacity for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallWhile Dorothy Sleeps, Tin Woodman Visits WebMD: Originally appeared in 47.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USWhile Dorothy Sleeps, Tin Woodman Visits WebMD: Originally appeared in 47.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®158982026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Romanian Prose Poems: Originally appeared in 25
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978250
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Raphael came by the night before the deportations were supposed to begin, dressed in a vast desolation of black silk, with a hood. His fiery gazes crisscrossed my forehead, wine streamed down my cheeks, spread over the ground, people sipped it in their sleep. –Come, said Raphael, draping over my blinding shoulders a desolation similar to his. I bent toward my mother, kissed her incestuously, and fled. A swarm of big black tropical butterflies slowed my steps. Raphael dragged me after him, and we descended to the railway. I felt the tracks underfoot, I heard the whistle of a locomotive closing in, my heart froze. The train passed overhead.I opened my eyes. Before me, on a wide plain, was a giant candelabrum with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallRomanian Prose Poems: Originally appeared in 252025-12-20text/htmlen-USRomanian Prose Poems: Originally appeared in 252025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®149502026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20We Are All So Happy Now: Originally appeared in 35.1
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978251
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Born in Mississippi in 1943, my father spent most of his formative years trying not to become strange fruit, low hanging, easy to split open. When he was a boy he told God he wanted to rise again as a white man or rot in hell. When he became a man, he realized there was no God. No God would lay a curse on a people like the one the Devil put on the black man. When he says this, my mother adds that God never showed much love for the black woman either. They both laugh until they don’t.On those rare occasions when my father allows his picture to be taken, he stands tall, looks directly at the camera, anger coming off him in invisible waves. His chin is always raised, arms rigidly at his sides. He is ready to fight.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallWe Are All So Happy Now: Originally appeared in 35.12025-12-20text/htmlen-USWe Are All So Happy Now: Originally appeared in 35.12025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®172902026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Balut: Originally appeared in 46.2
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978253
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Angela Flores was twenty when she started work at the Ong’s bungalow, although her work permit said she was twenty-three, the legal age for domestic helpers in Singapore. Her supervisor at the agency had assured her it was just a minor detail, that everyone did that, and as long as the Ongs did not find out, it was okay to lie.“Trust me. Just keep quiet and you’ll be fine,” Mrs Lim said as she handed the contract to Angela. Even under the dull fluorescent light, Mrs Lim’s diamond ring, the size of a chickpea, glittered at all angles. Angela had never seen such a big diamond before, and its price and authenticity were frequent topics of speculation among the domestic helpers in the office. After all, there wasn’t
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallBalut: Originally appeared in 46.22025-12-20text/htmlen-USBalut: Originally appeared in 46.22025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®298912026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Contributor Bios
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978254
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Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm is Anishinaabek from the Chippewas of Nawash First Nation, Saugeen Ojibway Nation, in Ontario. Kateri is an internationally acclaimed writer, spoken word poet, Indigenous arts activist, publisher and communications consultant. She and her sons live in their community at Neyaashiinigmiing on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway Nation. Kateri is the founder and Managing Editor of award-winning publisher Kegedonce Press.Shauna Singh Baldwin is an award-winning novelist, short fiction writer, playwright, essayist, and poet. Awards include the Friends of American Writers Prize, Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean), and a Giller Prize shortlisting. She serves on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallContributor Bios2025-12-20text/htmlen-USContributor Bios2025-12-202025TWOProject MUSE®231262026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002025-12-20Images
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/987813
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I think the world is scary and terrible and you could despair very easily . . . but you live every goddamn day.The essential blessing, after all, is that we’re alive—we’re here.Prose always has a richness to it: it’s made out of sound, it’s potentially delightful, and it’s potentially occlusive, in the sense that there’s always the possibility that it will fail to do its job. So it’s imperfect and it will always be imperfect.As an artist, I strive to be all ages, all sexes, and maybe even to imagine some ages in sexes that never existed before!Boundaries. What is literature, what not, what is art, what joke? Where the limits? Perhaps only in some sterile utopia of theory.All people are languaged.I think it’s
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/592/image/coversmallImages2026-04-10text/htmlen-USImages2026-04-102026TWOProject MUSE®52592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-04-10