Our daughter has put herself
in hospital again.
I spend the day beside her,
talking, laughing, abiding silence
I never thought I’d be doing this. I recall sitting in a foxhole as a paratrooper, reading the book of Psalms and thinking, hey, I kinda looove this. I always thought the point of poetry was to confuse. Thousands of couches later, five books and literary festivals all over the world, I want to take […]
I knew that being the editor of Lunch Ticket would require filling some pretty big shoes, but it wasn’t until I was directing the journal that I fully understood the extent of what that implied: it wasn’t just a matter of successfully leading a staff of almost 40 volunteers, but of building upon what the editor before me […]
Some authors write along the questions, Is it true, is it necessary, is it kind? Long Division is true. More than ever, it is necessary. But is it kind? Rarely are things in this complicated world that are true and necessary also kind. Long Division does not shrink away from this dichotomy—instead, it rises to meet the challenge. The bravery of writing a story without shrinking away from the violence,
Grossman is a New York Times national and international best-selling author. His first novel, Warp, was published in 1997. His second novel, Codex, became an international bestseller. The Magicians, the first book of a trilogy, was a New York Times Best Seller, won the 2010 Alex Award […]
Cosme Cordova was born in San Pedro de la Cueva in Sonora, Mexico, and brought to Riverside, California at five years old, where he still resides. Cordova is the owner of Division 9 Gallery (Riverside, California). In 2002 he co-founded Riverside’s Arts Walk along with Mark Schooley (Riverside Community Arts Association), which has run monthly […]
Elizabeth Earley holds an MFA in Fiction from Antioch University Los Angeles. Her stories and essays have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The First Line Magazine, Fugue, Hair Trigger, and Glimmer Train, among other publications. Elizabeth is the recipient of the David Friedman Memorial Prize for Fiction, has twice been a finalist for the AWP […]
Douglas Kearney is a poet, performer, and librettist from Altadena, California. Kearney has received a Whiting Writers Award, a Coat Hanger Award, and fellowships at Cave Canem, Idyllwild, and others. His work has appeared in a number of journals, including Poetry, nocturnes, Pleiades, Callaloo, Fence, LA Review of Books, The Iowa Review, and The Ninth Letter. His produced operas include Sucktion, […]
D.J. Waldie is the author of Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, Where Are Now: Notes from Los Angeles, and other books about Southern California. He also is the author—with Diane Keaton—of two architectural studies: California Romantica and House. Jennifer McCharen: What are you working on right now? D.J. Waldie: For some years I’ve been writing a blog twice a week […]
Grandma’s Poems: 5. Sex in an Apartment Building “My neighbours make love every night!” I complain, itching to give her all the juicy details. The woman’s moans and the man’s grunts sneak under my quilt stitched with maple leaves of every colour, hop along my penguin and iceberg-adorned pyjamas, wet my skin intoxicated by cheap […]
To S.B If I’m not dead, if somebody isn’t dreaming or imagining me, then I’m rocking back and forth and it’s cold. Back and forth. To the rhythm of the thing that for such a long time I’ve called heart. Back and forth. Without effort, to and fro. The difficult part is departing, leaving the […]
They delivered the news of his death with a sharply creased flag. She was nursing their two-week-old girl-child on the worn couch, lulled by the glow of the television then the hard rap on the door snapped her awake. She yanked her breast back into the nursing bra and bounced the squalling baby in […]
Then in the motel room they rented by the month—with the kitchenette & the microwave & the mini-refrigerator & cable tv When he sat upright & peered at the ceiling each lung an ocean eyes wide & hands tight on the arms of the recliner My father swears he saw the host of heaven call […]
[flash fiction] Thinking about cunnilingus in the elevator is hardly a cause for concern. That was what Dr. Wendy Savannah told Vega while they were having lunch this afternoon. It’s every time I ride the one at work though, replied Vega. I think it’s because my husband won’t do it right. Dr. Savannah looked out […]
FACT: I am fourteen years old. I already know more than my mother does. She doesn’t drive. She doesn’t work. My mother quit school after eighth grade and went to vocational school. Now she has kids in grade school, junior high, and high school, plus four more at home, three in diapers, cloth diapers. Every […]
A mild winter meant a busy first shotgun season for hunters in the rolling hills of southern Iowa. My father and I had made the hour drive from Des Moines south on I-35 to my grandfather’s land midday Friday for the hunt that night. When we arrived, the evening air was cool, but not cold, […]
Some years ago—never mind how long precisely “I don’t remember anything that happened to me.” Michael lifts his hands to chest level as if he is about to catch something. He has beautiful hands that make neat stitches on a hem or trace in the air music’s rise and fall. Now they feel the emptiness […]
[flash fiction] It started when she was thirteen. It started because she was always cold. When she was cold her knees would knock echoes down the mountains. The sound tested avalanches. It was a thing that was sistered to womanhood. A movement from within, like the beginnings of an itch. She started like her mother […]
You park in front of the restaurant where you’d agreed to rendezvous. You met him on the plane. How often such chats filled the space of the hours of flight, sometimes against your will, sometimes with it. You weren’t the one who started the conversation. It was almost never you. It was the man on […]
While the one divides into two: the heart and its shadow, The world and its threat, the crow back of the sparrow. -“Of Ancient Origins and War” Brigit Pegeen Kelly “Doesn’t look like much,” Mom said, as we pulled into the parking lot of the Titan Missile Museum. The main building was low to the […]
As told through the lips of Nước Hoa. I stood angry. I entered the waters of the Xepon in a wild and arrogant gait. Meiet, the tallest of all the village teenage girls, quieted my sloppy entry with a stare. It did not register with my tortured mind her appearance. She stood in the river […]
My mother fashioned my hair +++++iinto rows of wheat. ++++++++++++++++iI am in a plaid button down ++++++++++++++++++++++iand cow girl boots– ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++this is the year +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++iiI will declare my All-American heritage: +++++ino more cornrow pleats ++++++++++++++++ior Southern meals. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Today I am not my accent +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++iior choice of meal. I am a black stain +++++ion a white […]
Death We shrouded Father’s body, which could not wash itself. We carried you to the church where you used to step boldly inside for mass at dawn everyday with your arthritic legs. We carried you all the way to the grave you couldn’t walk to by yourself and laid you carefully inside your home. […]
Yesterday, a man walking his monkey on a leash kissed my cheek offered sweet potato ice cream. A flavor I’ve never tried. This note— Please burn your bread at the right toaster. Temple sign teaches what to say before I cross the bridge: careful of the footing because the responsibility cannot be assumed about the […]
In 1962 my parents packed four suitcases, one gray trunk with a brass lock, my stereo, my tennis racket (remnant of happier days and therefore a sign of their hope for my future), and me into our white Lincoln Continental. We headed up Route 301 to the University of Florida campus in Gainesville three hundred […]
“Do you like Jerry Lewis?” I ask the stranger next to me in a movie theater. We’ve been making small talk, waiting for the movie to begin, about films and directors, young and old. The conversation has just turned to comedians, and I thought, there’s my cue. She tilts her blonde head. “He’s not my […]
I know you. You’re a swagger. A badass. Someone who went and got his mettle tested and returned stateside to the tea drinkers and powderpuffs with a chip on his shoulder and ribbons pinned to your chest. The world had got a whole lot smaller while you were at war: one day walking proud, the […]
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