#63: Nonfiction by Olaf Kroneman
A RUMBLE FOR HUMANITY Your heroes can compromise you. Muhammad Ali put me at risk. The first time I encountered Ali, then Cassius Clay, was…
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#62: Nonfiction by Ruth Neuwald Falcon
ARTIFACTS When I was growing up, I hated the crowded shelves in the living room, den, and hallway of our Upper West Side apartment. “I…
#61: Fiction by Raynald Nayler
IN THE PETRIFIED FOREST My husband and I are turning circles in a parking lot. Circles and more circles. Very slowly. We’ve been doing this…
#60: Nonfiction by Christopher Eckman
THE ART OF FUGUE They meet in Burlington, Iowa. My rail-thin mother with curly hair and her little girl beside her, my tall bony father with…
#59: Poetry by Yuan Changming
WOMAN-RADICAL: A FEMINIST LESSON IN CHINESE CHARACTERS 妇：lady is a woman who has overthrown a mountain 好：wo-man spelt as one word simply means good 妙：young…
#58: Fiction by Robert Sachs
THE RING ON RUBY RIFKIN’S PINKY When people in the old neighborhood mentioned Howard “Ruby” Rifkin, it was with a whisper. He was in the…
#57: Fiction by Wood Reede
MAN ON THE MOON In her dream she was flying over the coast of Africa. Not that she had ever been to Africa, but she…
#56: Poetry by Fred Dale
SOMETIMES GRASS IS A HAWK TO BE LEFT ALONE Forget what you know about hawks— the clawed mice, the breaking apart of their oyster shell…
#55: Fiction by Robin Lanehurst
TO SEE THE WIZARD Tornadoes scratched at the sky’s green edges, threatening ruin. Clouds swirled like dirty pond water, scummy algae surfacing and submerging. Tips…
#54: Nonfiction by Scott Laudati
WELCOME TO PARADISE In my junior year of high school, I saw thirty-five fist fights. The violence arrived one day like a mass psychogenic illness…
#53: Poetry by Shreya Vikram
PRAYER TO THE TILES ON MY BEDROOM FLOOR Once, I hated you. Once, I wished for your softer cousins, toothless spreads. Once, I wanted things…
#52: Fiction by Linda Caradine
BROTHER JOHN We was country. That’s why when Mamma and Daddy Pete had John, we knowed he was special. He had him a light bright…
#51: Nonfiction by Michael Silverman
NEWARK As I waited for the garbage to be emptied into a truck, I was with a group of young men waiting to be taken…
#50: Nonfiction by Aakriti Karun
TOUCHING I once heard that the oldest parts of the brain associate themselves with ritual. On default, the primitive brain relapses, in some beastly instinct,…
#49: Poetry by Cecil Morris
A KIND OF APOLOGY When you rise and the streetlight leaking in catches you, your hair swinging down, your breasts shifting, I hear the tumbling…
