#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 on television. I was ten years old and saw this young black guy dressed in a tuxedo and top hat, brandishing a walking stick and reciting poetry. He was scheduled to […]
#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 arrived from Europe with nothing,” Ellen said when I complained. “I have built a life and filled it with beautiful things.” “But you can’t see them,” I protested. “They’re just […]
#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 for what seems like forever. Anton is nervous, and I’m trying to calm him down. Maybe another ten minutes, and we’ll get out on the road. Maybe. “Hand over hand, […]
#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 his bachelor aviator glasses and slick black hair. Their love is at first, like many others, obsessive. They spend drunken nights together and laugh about them the next morning. They are young, […]
#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 women supporting each other are always wonderful 嫁：to marry a man is for a girl to have her own family 妖：weird would be a woman if she goes broken 姣: […]
#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 mob, they said, a protégé of Hymie Weiss. He had done hard time. When I was ten and living in Chicago, he was my neighbor, although neither I nor anyone […]
#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 just knew that the landmass below was, in fact, the southern tip of Africa. That is how dreams usually go. There are no questions or uncertainties—things just are. She then […]
#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 bodies. I’m intrigued by their calm inclinations, when the other birds won’t give them a moment’s peace. Sometimes a hawk just wants to sit a spell, ruminate on dusk’s daily […]
#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 of trees whipped, chopped, like greens in a food processor, beating every ounce of nourishing vitamins into healthy, earthy pulp. It wasn’t raining but pounding, splitting every blade of glass, […]
#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 no one had ever seen, and no one knew what to do. One fight the first day. Five the next. Just before Christmas break, we had two assemblies. In the […]