Features
The Don Magazine Features is an archive of writing drawn from across the magazine’s issues — a place to dip in and spend some time. Take a look at the fiction, poetry, essays, and interviews that have defined Don so far. You might revisit a favorite piece or come across something you missed the first time.
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The Hunt
The fire had died down to embers and the wind shifted slightly, blowing the smoke westward out of camp. I shuffled my feet in the dirt as I looked up at the sky. Grandfather knew the names and histories of the stars; he used to tell their stories when I was still too young to understand. Father says he wishes he had listened to them, because now when he looks up to Grandfather’s ghost, he has no idea what it is trying to tell him. When I ask Grandmother if she knows, she smiles and hugs me; she doesn’t say much at all anymore. Mother says her ghost has already left to be with Grandfather, and when I ask what she means, she says that I need to wash the cooking pot and to please stop pestering her. It was a full moon, which meant it was bright enough that I didn’t need to keep the fire burning to see, but Mother says I should do it anyway, because the fire is all that separates us from the wild.
I'm nervous today.
Dishes rattle in the cupboard,
a glass breaks,
a plate chips.
I pick up the pieces
cut my hand
blood drips
The story of infrared photography
Colours represent only the tiny fraction of the light spectrum which is visible to humans. Beyond this range of light, we can for example find ultraviolet rays that tan our skin on the beach, or microwaves that warm up our bento in the kitchen. Infrared light is another such kind of light, named for its frequencies approximating the visible red light.
Ketchup: No Open Food or Drink in the Library
“You’re a lil’ squishy piece of shit aren’t you, all high and mighty wrapped up on your bourgeois packaging. I mean, what the hell do you even think is in here?”
Rivers Of Blood 血の川
An earthquake took place one day. The earth had seen what was to come, and it trembled in terror. Had it but taken a slow, deep breath instead! We don't need all that excess to push us to evil.
ある日、地震が発生した。起きてくることが見えてしまって、震えた。すでに悪を抱える我々には、大きさはどうだってよい。
Ayu Okakita
Ayu Okakita: born in Fukuoka, raised in Osaka, sculpted in the US and UK. While her music journey technically started in Japan, it was in the US on a high school exchange program that she found her voice, writing lyrics and putting vocal melodies to them to combat homesickness. “I love singing. [The voice is] a very raw instrument.” Raw is an understatement however. Since that time in Indiana, this instrument of hers has undergone growth and fine-tuning. As a result, her music style is surreal, ethereal, calming, heartbreaking.
Strawberry Stand
I wanted to burn down that strawberry stand
Walking back from a long workday of yoroshiku onegaishimasu, I halted—
21 meters away from my apartment
ビワ (biwa)
the breath she pulls out of me
as i try on
this red
kimono
Red House
Alight at Sakaishi station, on the JR Hanwa line. Take the West Exit down the stairs and make a right. Walk past Mister Donut, up to the intersection, and cross the road on your left. See the giant red guitar before you? You have arrived at Red House.
A bushfire in the ocean
I soak up that feeling—
pooling black oil
stinging my fingertips.
it coerces me to stay:
a bit of black tar
in my lungs
feels safer
than a smokehouse
burning through every organ
if I leave.
Sangria
Red is the color of my shame, through the ill-taught embarrassment that was bottle-fed to my infant body. Of course, it could never come from the breast. Who teaches a child to feel shame in their body? The visceral reaction I had no words for, through the red heat of my ears, my stomach, causing burning pins and needles from my spine. I began to cower.
Impression-rêve
J'ai rêvé de toi…
Tout près, inaccessible,
Apparition, songe ravivé,
Je ne veux te quitter.
Pourtant, tu restes éloignée,
Tranquille tu ne saurais te lier.
Impression ?
The Devil Jars
As a scholar traveling through foreign lands, I am always suspicious. It is physically healthier to be so. I don't listen to proclamations about miracle cures or celestial orgasms anymore. I doubt first, and then weigh the chances. Suspicion also helps me keep an appropriate distance on events, in order to observe and see objects, people and behaviors as they should be witnessed: in the third person. But, I can recall one occasion when I threw off my rule and let myself inhale exotic logics.
Bleeding Heart
I had a friend in high school, he lived in my neighborhood and we rode the same bus together every day. I don’t know how it happened exactly; though it was one of those friendships that just seem to form as a matter of fact, not much to go off of but we knew we would be best friends for life from the moment we met. Every chance we got, we would be over at his house playing games just chit-chatting the hours away — talking about the game we were playing, school, teachers, crushes, life, anything.
The Dairy Queene (Or Perhaps The Lack Thereof) The Sixth Booke
In Which Our Hero—The Narrator of Our Tale—Upon Ingesting a Mysterious Potion Imagines Himself to Be in an Inhospitable Landscape Devoid of Any Civilized Amenities; A Vision so Disturbing That It Causes Him to Lose All Sense of Decorum and Engage in a Most Untoward and Undignified Altercation with You, Dear Reader (And For This Most Unfortunate Event We—The Author and His Characters—May Only Humbly Entreat You to Forgive Us).
Kasai City 河西市
朱赤に塗ってある米蔵
その隣の八百屋に入り
畑で鍛えられたお兄さんから
トマトを買ってしまう
友達は花を
A silo, carrying burgundy rooves from the 80's
We enter the greengrocer's next door
It doesn't take much for the man with the tight body
to convince me to buy his tomatoes
My friend gets his flowers
Apples Did Fall After All
There’s an image that descends on my mind every summer when the cicadas start singing and the heat haze starts ascending from the asphalt. An image of my mom walking next to my hunched grandmother, supporting her back and guiding her gently as they slowly climb a gentle slope. I remember walking behind them as a little girl, following them from a distance. To where, I don’t quite remember.