I spent the first day of the new year in Barstow, a small city in the high desert just over a hundred miles east of Los Angeles. I was there with my spouse and children to lay flowers on the graves of family members buried at Mountain View Memorial Park. From a distance, irregularly planted […]
I pulled into my snow covered driveway after a long day of work. I locked my black Subaru, fidgeted with my keys ‘til I found the kiwi green colored one marking home, and unlocked the front door. I was greeted by my dog Amelie—shaking her whole black-lab-pit body in a tremor of excitement. I put […]
Ammi and Abu, and that brother of mine— / They don’t know who I am. Curfews & calls / to prayer, weekly lectures at the mosque, / but then, there’s also the smell of bacon…
I have always been struck by the fluid lane-changes and cultural mash-ups that are part of day-to-day life in Panama, but never more so than on this year’s trip—one of at least twenty that I have taken since meeting my Panamanian husband in New York over thirty years ago. Over time, Panama City has become […]
In Charlotte, where winter brings no guarantee of snow, small children press their palms together, close their eyes so tight they see waves of color, and plead with God to unzip heaven…
Hungover Mary Birnbaum of the future, I’m writing to you with an urgent message. You’ve crossed into 2016, while here I sit, planted forever in last year. Once I send this blog to my editor, it will travel away from me like a lover on a train, waving a scarf from an open window as it […]
A literary and art journal
from the MFA community at
Antioch University Los Angeles.
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