Current Issue

Written in the Sky

Patricia Foster

I’ve tried to write this letter several times . . . but the words shimmered, then vanished. I wanted to talk to the dead about the dead . . .

 

 

 

 

White Man Sweating

Paul Swehla

Some people call me the white devil. I don’t blame them; there are good reasons for this. In fact, I may forever be unforgiven . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Staggeringly Beat

Arthur Plotnik

Early in my junior year at Albany (NY) State Teachers College, I succumbed to an intoxication that would lead to expulsion . . . and an abrupt turn in my destiny. It wasn’t booze . . .

 

 

 

 

Eulogy

Paul Hostovsky

I was a little in love with her. But ask anyone who knew her and they’ll tell you, she was a pain in the . . . Such unstinting attention to detail and yet so parsimonious with the details of her own life . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finding Walter

Maddie Lock

“Ich bin deine Tochter.” I am your daughter. My father sways just a bit, and I see in his eyes, that the millisecond before I said this, he already knew . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Questions from the Crossroads

Laura Michele Diener

To the curious Jewish child that I was, Christianity, particularly Catholicism, promised a certain sinful glamor . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

La Linea

J. Malcolm Garcia

Sister Magdalena Pasquel stands on a street corner . . . every so often she makes a face . . .

 

 

 

 

Walt Whitman on the Metro

Marie Manilla

Walt Whitman is disappointed in me. I’d just spent three days in D.C. . . . on this visit I intended to conjure Whitman’s ghost . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snowed in with
Carl Sandburg

Rick Smith

 

For years, Sandburg had been visiting our New York City apartment whenever he was in town . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Headtrip Hollow,
Panic Gulch

Rick Kempa

 

My brother and I are in day five of a hike that traverses the long western stretch of the Tonto Plateau . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buried Beneath Her Skin Like Slivers

Gina Troisi

I wish I had learned more about her, the shards of self that she hid away, buried beneath her skin like slivers . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

Get A Life

Brittany Ackerman

Girls had to have certain things in order to exist. If you didn’t have them, you didn’t . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Seduction Zone

Dave Sanfacon

I wanted a Boston girl but Boston girls don’t want Worcester boys. It’s always been that way . . . So I changed my Match.com residence to Boston . . .

 

 

 

 

 

The Earth Creaks

Caitlín Church

It is midwinter, snowing, and almost midnight when you arrive at the isolated cottage where your husband is living alone, recuperating from both vague and specific maladies . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gift

Elaine Fowler Palencia

During the years we lived six houses apart . . . the old man and I had only one conversation . . .

 

 

 

 

 

My Mother is a Cat

Joe Kraus

She is there but only partly there. And if she’s only partly there, it follows that she is partly somewhere else or sometimes partly some-thing else . . .

 

 

 

 

 

The Shape of the Skull,
the Shape of the Mind

Andrew Gudgel

After a moment of shock, the first thought that leapt into my mind was “How did their brain fit in there?”

 

 

Bob
Photo by Ida Adams

 

Bob the Divine(r)

Steve Adams

My Uncle Bob in Arkansas, a man born for overalls. He’d asked us if we wanted to see him do some “water-witching” . . .

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Jay Wamsted

 

We Only Licensed

Jay Wamsted

You the only teacher up in here who ever understood me, who ever knew how to teach me. You understood that I’m not stupid—I’m smart, just lazy . . .

 

 

 

Photo by Alex Powell

 

 

A Dream Deferred

Mel Livatino

In 1958, when I graduated high school, I was a kid with a foggy mind and a vague, unfocused life. My only passions were the horses my hormones rode through me, spurs furious, all day and night . . .