Shampagne we swiped from Meeks’ Country Store wasn’t champagne at all, but white grape juice, Welch’s, in a single serve bottle with a stained label, but out in the mid-seventies dark, running plowed-under tobacco fields, sparklers sputtering in our hands, we pretended, boasted, toasting each other as we passed the bottle between us, dirty-faced dreamers … Read more
And there was no dance, no holy place from which we were absent. ~Sappho Talk me down, if you can. There is so much to be dangerous about. There is that knowing that has shimmered just beyond me as long as I can remember, disarticulated light, shivers like streetlight glimmers on a hotel window. Below, … Read more
A man helped me out last night. He was small and dark-skinned, with short curly black hair and dark brown eyes. He wore black pants and a green sweater, with two white stripes running down each sleeve. I met him on my way home from work. His name was Rodrigo. I’d taken one of the … Read more
I carry my vows on my tongue so that I’ll choke before I break one. Such sudden, episodic deaths you’ve come to accept as a fact of your life now, just as you’ve accepted as facts my incurable sorrow and my need to make and make -believe. You know that I can’t help it if … Read more
Pripyat: Signs Oksana says the smallest creatures change most by what passes through them, to watch for signs. Hirundo rustica– the brown barn swallow’s feathers blanch albino like a dove, counterfeiting hope. Hairs along the purple spiderwort’s stamen blush pink with invisible current.Jonathan Travelstead served in the Air Force National Guard for six years as … Read more
Sitting across from me at the dinner table two weeks into our marriage, my husband Norm scrutinized Popular Electronics, grinning as if he’d found the secret to happiness. Must’ve been 1959. I asked if he wanted more cauliflower and for the first time noticed a small birthmark shaped like Iceland on his prematurely bald scalp. … Read more
Two-and-a-half decades too late for 1977’s glorious outbursts; do you remember how the opening guitar riffs of the Clash’s “I Fought the Law” sent audio-orgasms into our ear canals? We were black leather-clad, bandolier-adorned, plaid skirt-wearing, combat boot-fitted seventeen-year-old misfits huddled over a set of tinny Sony headphones in a backwoods high school’s cramped girls’ … Read more
The Fall 2014 issue features Creative Nonfiction from Marcia Bradley, Stanzi, Frei, and Sara Walters. Fiction from Lynne M. Hinkey. Poetry from Jim Bartruff, Scott Chalupa, Carol V. Davis, Nadya Rousseau, Jeremy Voigt, Barry Yeoman and many more.
Before the meningitis, after the endless year in Colorado, and the aftertimes before the children waiting, the myriad memories that rush in and push out the memories I keep remembering, I’d rather not remember and I remember I remember remember —all but the names, just faces and just feelings just impressions really are all I … Read more
It’s 14º, dry at the Jackson St. station, and I’m waiting for the Blue Line to Bucktown. Some late-40s bro strokes his acoustic, his graveled falsetto slides through his “Man in the Mirror” encore. Cruising the silent tracks of the L, I can guess where their lingering caress might take me. I’m studying a pint … Read more
At night, if you’re quiet, you can hear the campfires gossiping. They laugh like javelinas at our episodic sleep. Whooping cranes and blue herons, in February, litter Sundown Bay. Save the wintering waders, the coastline is anemic. It’s like living in a place where there are too many dogs— this jammed choir of Camaros on … Read more
Once a year I pick up my dead dad from the cemetery. The cars with tinted windows move slowly looking for their dead loved ones. I am nervous to see my dad. I miss him. I even coughed excessively over the phone for my boss to give me time off. I also paid two ladies … Read more
I am coming to you now. When Dorothy was alive, I did not think of you as much more than the scenery framing our friendship. She noticed when you were low or high or altered. Do you save anything? Do you keep some of the world in your watery heart? … Read more
Here is a small prairie on 5th Avenue. Grass and wildflowers hold off concrete and buses with their dried clothes. I do not know the name of this feeling: Is it longing or ecstasy? I want to say to Dorothy, Here’s something we missed. She once said I am going to miss me. A … Read more
After Mark Rothko (see images here) We are driving on a white road. We know it cannot go on forever and yet that is what it is doing, brightening and widening, widening till there is no more road, just land and sky, sky and lightly penciled stars, hills and bones and Dairy Queens. We must … Read more
I’m counting the remaining seconds of my life on one hand–in the five steps along the concrete railing of the bridge crossing the river. People scream their car horns at me and some jerks in a Hummer order me to jump. The sun sets behind the haunted hotel overlooking the water, built beside a haunted … Read more
They never understood you either. Demure, elegant, reserved—their power always seemed to emanate from a far field you never ventured out to. Early, before they ended it abruptly, you would show up suddenly with a six pack of Coors and a bucket of chicken, knocking at their undented door. You laughed, belching, and said see … Read more
Patrick accidentally injected over an ounce of engine grease into the middle finger of his right hand They should have amputated it, said his wife It cost us $16,000 to fix and it’s still not right I sat on the couch stroking a mangy cat I didn’t notice it was mangy but after we left … Read more
It was hard to remember completely the first time I met Ana. I only have two specific memories from that night. The first one, firmest of the evening, was my blurred reflection in that too-small, too-dark bathroom. I sweltered under my raincoat but couldn’t take it off; I wasn’t dressed for the place. I swiped … Read more
Make sure to rope yourself to such posts as the smells of jasmine and rain in the evening, or the sound of blackbirds plucking worms before the dark swells over. Ease into the rush. Lift one limb at a time. Practice opening one eye, then two – one nostril, then both. Wiggle your toes, loose … Read more
There’s this one spot in the front yard where the edge of the grass juts out into the driveway, so when you’re backing out you have to swerve to the right. I don’t know why it’s there; I guess the landscape designer thought it might serve some sort of aesthetic purpose to make our yard … Read more
After Mark Rothko (see images here) The present we know, with its ascending stairs that are somewhere else descending, happened as we wandered, as the field widened and took us in. We saw what we were as we held it close and it doubled and gave. As the Plumeria opened, we savored, sometimes painfully, as … Read more
I. 아름아, mom calls. I’m talking to my partner on my mother’s couch, telling her the same things I’ve been saying all my life: Korean doesn’t have a ‘r’ sound, so it’s more like a ‘r d l’ all smushed together, not a roll like in Spanish. I see this woman I love … Read more
To begin with The hieroglyphical origin of My identity was simply no body But a common reed Bowing its head to the rising sun On the barren bank of the Nile Slim, tall, hollow-hearted Standing against tropical heat Until one day “I” was used As a human symbol, an open vowel Referring to the … Read more
What? The beer can on the bookcase? There’s a funny story behind that beer can. Well, maybe not that funny. Someone gave it to me when I lived in Rego Park, Queens, on the same street where Kitty Genovese was murdered. That was the first one where neighbors just listened and watched. I always meant … Read more
