I was six years old the first time I saw a mystery novel on my older cousin’s bookshelf with my own name, Judy Bolton, on the spine. I couldn’t stop my finger from tracing the letters boldly printed across the front of that hardcover book. I like to think my father chose the name for […]
the way doubt sits in your eyes like a flat left front tire waiting for me to rummage around in the trunk for a spare whisper of encouragement a tire iron of hope Karen Vande Bossche is a Bellingham, Washington poet and short story writer who teaches middle school students who ask questions such as […]
[flash creative nonfiction] I juggle the groceries in my arms: a box of granola bars, a chunk of ginger, an onion, a carton of eggs. I only came in here for the eggs. Ahead of me, a woman juggles her own groceries, plus a ruddy-faced toddler screaming for sweets. The registers in the self-checkout line […]
Elise Capron is a literary agent at the Sandra Dijkstra Agency in San Diego since 2003. She represents many talented authors including Maureen McHugh, Jonathon Keats, and National Book Award Longlist, Cynthia Barnett. This interview took place on July 31, 2015 via Skype. * * * “Did you want video? You’re only […]
It never gets easier, you just go faster. —Greg LeMond After my father’s stroke, after months of rehab, after coming to terms with the fact that the blind spot on his right side—his lost peripheral vision—was the new normal, his doctor told him he couldn’t ride his bicycle. Last fall he had aortic valve replacement […]
After a Night in the Alley of Worshippers The point is not the frayed light of six a.m. or the barking of dogs, half-crazed by the scent of blood, who we had to drive away. Nor the fatigue from a night spent deep in death, the network that only now falls silent, the shouts from […]
[flash fiction] Dearest Andrew, I hope this letter finds you, unlike the others which have gone astray. I cannot start my day without writing to you. With everyone off fighting The Kaiser, Charlotte now helps me roll out the pastries. Despite having to run it by myself, business is good. I have attempted a new […]
On birch bark, with chicken bone shards dipped in a pot of moth wing dust: an ink only visible near bioluminescent seaweed. I’ll roll and slip them into glass capsules and load these onto hummingbirds’ backs. You’ll know my words have reached you when the wingbeats fill your ears, and you’ll learn that love sounds […]
“Wo shi yi ge ren.” Chinese for I am alone. Party of one. In English the phrase sounds celebratory: you’re alone, but hey, it’s still a party. Chinese lacks that aura of metaphorical festivity. You just count. One. I contemplate counting as I report my solitary number to the hostess at a restaurant in Suzhou, […]
Lynell George is an LA-based, journalist, and essayist. Currently an arts and culture columnist for KCET’s Artbound, she has had a long career in Los Angeles journalism as staff writer for both the Los Angeles Times and LA Weekly–focusing on social issues, human behavior, and identity politics as well as visual arts, music, and literature. […]
(September 1884) Last Monday, in Etretat, Bapu Sahib Khanderao Ghatgay died. He was an Indian prince, a relative of His Highness, the Maharaja Gaikwar, Prince of Baroda in the province of Gujarath,in the Bombay Presidency. For about three weeks, we saw about a dozen young Indians passing through the streets: small, supple, with very dark […]
Ultimately, our mother was made to realize her error. You would have thought she would have noticed it herself at some point, looking at the boldfaced headline from The Herald News. Quitting was the first word in both the headline and the article, one that she clipped from the paper and affixed by magnet to […]
[flash fiction] There are bats in the attic. I’m not being euphemistic. There are bats in our attic and they are pushing me to the border of my sanity. The scuttling and whispering of teeth and wings above our heads sets my teeth on edge. Somehow, you sleep, your chest rising and falling with criminal […]
Richard Russo is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist. Russo grew up in Gloversville, New York, a small upstate town that once produced ninety percent of the nation’s dress gloves in its factories. Much of his work is inspired by his experiences of small town, working-class life. He has published seven novels, two short story collections, […]
The cop that wrote me up for trying to use a fake ID at an Ocean City bar was wearing yellow-striped shorts, an embarrassing reality that defused any grand aspirations of mine to spin the tale into one of proud delinquency. Where that cop is today, I do not know, and he does not know […]
On the wall hung a rifle. A brown rifle. Who knew how many years it had been there. From time to time, my father took it from between the deer, who seemed spooked, and cleaned it, blowing away the dust. He gazed at it, maybe daydreaming, maybe remembering old times, before getting up and hanging […]
ocean ellipsis mouth we catch ourselves a grumble in the time gap maw’s energetic swallow her beast, her quickening where were all the murderous bowlegged dangers i avoided rollerskating down Mermaid Avenue back when tides washed the back legs of youth’s agency there in the subatomic catacomb an organism of prisms sold in the back […]
It is Linda’s first night home after a four-day sales trip that takes her from Connecticut to Maine and back home again to Connecticut. She goes out on the road every other week. On the first night home after one of her trips we stay home, order in, get wrecked and do sex—mostly in that […]
Sonya Sones is the author of the young adult novels in verse Stop Pretending: What Happened When My Big Sister Went Crazy, What My Mother Doesn’t Know, What My Girlfriend Doesn’t Know, One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies, and To Be Perfectly Honest. She also wrote the adult novel in verse, The Hunchback of Neiman […]
I am looking for someone. On the subway. At the hospital. Walking the sticky streets of the in-town neighborhood where I live in the shadowy, noirish, lost-dog summer nights. It takes me a long time to realize what I am supposed to be doing. Two years, maybe. In my self-involved twenty-something way, I consider two […]
[In the white of my poems] In the white of my poems I’m dying Dressed by alphabet letters I escort myself to the grave • The word I write becomes another word How its cry inscribes the page My teeth of wildcat grinding Each poem is a mark of my claws • Evening death […]
It’s still dark, 0500 on a December morning. From our ship out in the harbor we see the lights of San Diego sparkle on the horizon. We are excited by the lights. Because for so much of the last four months the horizon has merely blended with the blue of the ocean. Nearly one thousand […]
A few days after our last issue’s publication, in South Carolina, a gunman entered a 199-year-old church during a prayer service. This specific place of worship had held a prominent role in social activism from the slave era to the Civil Rights Movement to the Black Lives Matter movement. The white gunman, in what is […]
The words return, fold over and begin anew, a shrouded spring enveloping mockingbirds in shaded trees who curse their surroundings in alternate rounds, as if fighting with the dawn. Their tune’s timbre recasts yesterday and all tomorrows as a graveyard of upended trees. Soon, all creatures bent on survival will throb with the song suspended […]
Summer jobs are supposed to be fun. Earn a little money to help save up for a car or maybe college. There’s a whole bunch of movies about the people working for carnivals or as life guards. Even if they’re miserable, they still have adventures and get to make out a little bit. I work at […]
Nick Burns died a gruesome death, and when they found him he looked almost serene, seated such as he was in his beloved, careworn La-Z-Boy with his hands folded over his round belly. There was tea on the stovetop, more than enough for a man living alone. Both of his companionable blue eyes were gone, […]
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