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, […]
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 […]
“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 […]
It wasn’t until sixth grade that I started lying about my mittens. Bright blue and pink, I told my friends that they had been a Christmas gift from my mom. “Nice mittens, man,” they’d say. “I know right,” I’d say laughing, and tuck them into my pocket. The truth was that I’d knit them myself; […]
I’ve worn different races as if they were shades of pantyhose. Many times, they felt just as constricting. They were not always adopted willingly, but sometimes forced on me. I am mixed; my father is white and my mother is an immigrant from El Salvador. But like all children, I started out raceless, like a […]
I keep the brown blur in my peripheral vision and trudge up hill, stinking of sweat and Deep Woods Off. A few yards off the trail, the canine dervish whirls her speckled body, thick neck thrashing in the air. She springs high on muscular legs and drops, scraping her face in the dirt, raging to […]
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