Jane Cassady Is there anything we can go in and get for you before we board it up? Before the window plywood gets its eventual graffiti, before you wash the clothes in Pine Sol to get out the smell of smoke, before a loving friend helps fold those clothes, so specifically and kindly, … 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
Andrea Danowski I was going to start off with the story my dad always tells about how he almost knocked over a Giacometti once. I don’t know if it was the one that recently sold for just over a hundred million dollars, but it was one of the Walking Man bronze sculptures. My dad lost … Read more
Shannon George Inside a small, oval-shaped wooden box festively adorned with yellow, green, and red paint lay six little dolls made of wire, paper, resin and tiny bits of cloth. Worry Dolls is how the store described them, and once I read the instructions for their use, they had to be mine. Before you go to … 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
Robert Fox Mother’s Day 2011. I have finished my laundry, vacuumed the apartment and am mopping the floors. To keep up my cleaning mood, to do these domestic things I have learned over the years, I’ve got to have the radio blasting. Tom Schnabel has just started his Sunday show with The Intruders, “I’ll Always … 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
I need a camera, to my eye, to my eye, reminding which lies I’ve been hiding -Wilco, “Kamera” There is profuse proof of my existence after age 10. My photographic life begins awkward, barely pre-teen. Band concerts, summer camping, middle-school portraits of me with braces, family pets, all chronologically ordered into albums; a … Read more
At the observation station observers tried observing themselves making observations and were impressed by the results. A film loop of a loop of film being filmed in a loop. For scientific purposes, some said. For posterity said others, to preserve in our selves the making of ourselves, as seen in the making. Doesn't everyone … Read more
How to still the gills until they need to go how to go from the … Read more
Mixing Bowl * Mother sits in the middle of the linoleum, legs splayed, and cradled between her knees is a bowl. I walk past and familiar smells seep in: the mellow twang of cabbage, the sharp sulfur of onions, spicy red chili powder, aromatic garlic and something salty, like fish sauce. I ask my … Read more
