Vivian Faith Prescott The muddy tide rising to shore should carry you downriver by now. But, I imagine your scow wedged between cottonwoods on the riverbank branches shoved through your chest motor revving. Maybe your skiff is jammed on the sandbar, and you’ve stumbled over the side, whirlpools sucking your rubber-booted feet. But here, … Read more
Nancy Long i. Harmony A fine Chinese meal my mother said is made of five flavors, a blending of elemental portions. What is sour, she said, if not the flesh of plum? To know sour is to taste green watering across your tongue, to feel the force of wood striking your open … Read more
Kacee Belcher After the wolf cub slipped from his mother into the den with his brothers and sisters, he hunched down in terror as he lay on the cold ground, his legs not yet working. His eyes, still closed, felt heavy with the placental fluid that had mixed with the dirt that surrounded the … Read more
Mathieu Cailler Penn continued to drive through the night. Snow and gales of wind assailed his SUV as he barreled towards home, his foot steady on the gas, his mitts positioned firmly at ten and two. Heat billowed from the vents on the dashboard and moved loose strands of hair … Read more
Jane Cassady But here it is. As we walk the summer camp kindergarten through third grade down the street to Pleasant Playground for their weekly swim, the kids are in their two quiet lines, listening for traffic and blue jays. The shutters are open, even though it's only been a week. "Poor Mr. Kim," … Read more
At nineteen years old, I become confused in my body and have to leave college. I walk in padded slippers and ratty bathrobe down the front hall of my childhood home. I avoid my mother and father, and my younger brother visiting from college who seems to be avoiding me, too. I work hard to … Read more
The Winter 2011 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Micaela Seidel, Genre X from Sarah Long, and Poetry from Lek Borja, Michelle “Strawberry” Heymann, Wednesday Hobson, and Jessica Kincade
I judge myself deeply, harshly – don’t allow courtesy given others, thoughtless tortured by tumultuous thoughts, ticking driving negativity nails through, aching begging, the merciless obsession eradicated, relentless screaming behind frozen stare, scared floods back like recoiling toes from cold water, endless forgiveness, permission – breathe and be, redemption when … Read more
I cannot muster effort enough to show what is and unspoken there what little deserves and overly qualifies a human to which I am particular. There is a body: made of sinews, contrasting with elasticity – his rubberband arms and legs cinnamon facades made for over-ambiguity – preserving a heart perpetual pumped this … Read more
A buck ninety-nine. If you pull up to the Window at 32nd and Rose And order something cheap but good With a tad more fat than you know you should Have but secretly crave, Make sure to tell them to make it a value meal, And they’ll wrap her in whole wheat lace And stick … Read more
1 It was summer. I was sweeping in the kitchen, facing south. There was that milling around feeling, children everywhere, my own and some others — that white-haired child from down the road. Hear the sound of hammering, one, two, three, pause, one, two, three — a husband somewhere, working. There is no … Read more
When I was a kid my parents moved a lot, but I always found them. They would carry on as if changing the locks was a game all parents played with their oldest child, to trick them into resiliency. They let my little sister have my bedroom one day while I was at school, to … Read more
in remembrance of Eun Kang What if it were just called Monday, not Night of Remembrance, not Ceremony or Candlelight Vigil? If this night was a night with nothing to take back? If women did not carry tea lights or pray under a canopy of bamboo? What if there … Read more
“Do you have a boyfriend?” It was one of the first questions my students asked me when I stood in front of their class on the opening day of the school year. Thirty-some heads of dark hair, thirty-some dark eyes, thirty-some blue-and-white uniforms, thirty-some giggling girls. “It's okay,” I said, calming down their laughter. “No, no … Read more
How to still the gills until they need to go how to go from the … Read more
The day before we met Hemingway the skiing was good. It was snowing and the going was sometimes hard. But we were young and strong and had skied well in spite of the snowstorm. The snow was soft and the falling down was part of it and the skiing was good. Doug … Read more
Our love is the night sky – the way it looks like cotton stretched over a bruise. L stands for the lithium stars you pointed to as we sat on sand in Kawai. We used to laugh like all of Spain’s church bells going off at once. Two lowercase l’s standing side by side, I … Read more
Born in 1939 in Maryland, John Fahey pioneered the use of traditional country and blues finger picking to showcase the acoustic steel string guitar as a solo instrument that could play a mix of traditional and non-traditional musical genres. He collaged ideas associated with Bartok, Charles Ives, Indian and Gamelan music, Tibetan chanting and western … Read more
The iron treadles rock and doven in the flatiron shadows, pressed air and piece work. Hungry hands move like birds. Every week the girl who makes the least gets fired. You march arm and arm with women from the factory, a banner draped across your chest and you sing. Farbende I used to call you—the … Read more
And then, hooked up to tubes and oxygen, She was screaming, catch me Joey, I’m falling! I picked her up, the heft and weight Of rabbit bones wrapped in silk, I’ve got you Rose I’ve got you. There were things I wanted to ask her, But she was calling me by her brother’s name. It … Read more
Two Hawks Quarterly Issue 2 – Number 2 – Fall 2008 __________________________________________________ 5230 Joan Sutton Chalk It Up To Love Ed Frankel Deconstruction John S. Pirres Drive-by Beauty Wendy Hudson Farbende Ed Frankel Generation Lost Marykate Linehan Ketchikan Allan Wasserman LIGHT Denise Emanuel Clemen Nice and Fat Telaina Morse Eriksen Out of … Read more
Verity.She appeared before us in the City Weekly newspaper, wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a bathtub, a child and yet a mummy—swaddled in soggy printers ink one wet September day like the day when the world came to know the name of heroin.The coffee was brewing.Brigham and I agreed wordlessly, Verity was just … Read more
Characters Antonio- Cheerful, 41 year old single Italian man looking for a long-term relationship.He feels numb when the subject of HIV status arises on his dates.He has been positive for eighteen years, and that fact is beginning to make him feel like an outsider in some social situations.He hates dating for this reason.He … Read more
210 Freeway Eastbound Los Angeles seems to reinvent itself after a good rainstorm. With days of dreary downpour finally over, the sun is out, the sky is a shade of blue I don’t recall, and the mountains show off now that their veil of smog has been removed. I want to roll down all my … Read more
1. Our mother calls me to come and look at her. That is how we begin. “Say something,” she says. She tries to sound petulant, but her image in the full-length mirror makes her smile. “A sheath,” I offer, cross-legged on the floor. I hold a pillow on my lap despite the heat. Our mother … Read more
