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(poetry)
Author: Another Chicago Magazine
Beneath the tree, grasses of pale yellow and green commingle to create a neon shade reminiscent of Mello Yello, a soda from my childhood….
(nonfiction)
I was in Colorado because seventy-plus hour workweeks punctuated by martinis had swallowed me whole.
(nonfiction)
“Nature is healing,” says a small tin sign in front of a dried up cornfield.
(nonfiction)
“Why don’t we come to an agreement then? I’ll buy the alcohol if you finally stop working.” Hassan said as he sipped his Scotch and watched her with his psychologist’s stare. She had the uneasy feeling she was a frog in his pot, and he was slowly turning up the heat.
(fiction)
“Lehman has claimed a kinship with poets of the past that exists outside time,” writes reviewer Suzanne Lummis.
(poetry reviews)
As the world began to open again, we were proud. We’d done a good job. Then you came.
(nonfiction)
Those smuggled copies of Interview and The Witching Hour that I took with me and read and reread in the suffocatingly dark and overly zealous world that was my conversion therapy experience got me from one moment to the next.
(nonfiction)
Author’s Note These pieces are part of a series of lipograms, writing that excludes one…
I mentioned the most important aspect once we were out of the taxi and waiting for the electric-blue bus: never fall asleep. The ride’s purpose was not to get comfortable or distracted.
(nonfiction)
“I think that as long as you treat your characters with compassion, and you’re thoughtful and empathic and you do what you can to support their narrative and their truths,” Emily Maloney tells Barbara West.
(interview)
“Corpus Alienum”
“It’s True. I Left a ‘Shithole Country'”
(poetry)
“Wilkinson’s knowledge of horticulture helps to connect the themes of family, inheritance, and existence to the greater world around us, to all living things,” writes reviewer Meredith Boe.
(nonfiction)
Well, we were summoned for a bit of smiting, but you see the smitees really aren’t to our taste. It’s like the takeout place sent the wrong order. These little deviants would be perfect for the Shebears, but your father said to remind you they’re at their class tonight, so they can’t come.
(Drama)
The universe is expanding, a voice reported. Bits and particles of it are shooting out from some
ancient central point like sparks from a Roman candle, and some day, when all the expanding
glowing bits of matter in our universe have stretched themselves out tight like a rubber band, instead of it all coming roaring back to the center, as we’d thought, the universe may instead simply continue to expand. So any parting of ways could be permanent.
(fiction)
It was a space where his Swahili was adequate—he only needed to know numbers and how to say nashuka hapa or command shika when paying the conductor. He liked the feeling of anonymity yet knowing the system.
(fiction)
“Colorado”
“Arkansas”
(poetry)
Transit Authority regulations required drivers, young and old, to wear bland gray ties around the collars of our bland gray uniform shirts in addition to gray regulation sweaters and jackets, but after checking in for our routes for the day and transfer books many of us hotshots replaced our ties with tropical bandanas as a way of putting a little color into the city’s frequent gray days.
(nonfiction)
When Owlet was two years old I ran across the phrase “a mother should tempt her child into the world.” Meaning that she should show her child how cool it is to be alive, how interesting it is, how inspiring. Something like that. And that’s probably a good idea. I’m trying.
(drama)
“I Like to Think That We Were Kind of Pioneers.” An Interview with Cynthia Weiss and Miriam Socoloff
“To actually physically be fixing broken things just felt like this is the only thing to be doing right now. It is our job as Jews to do tikkun olam–to repair the world.”
(interview)
That need for a map—to marriage? To love? To sex? To life?—seems to have dominated the lives of my parents, who vied for their analyst’s attentions like children for that of a favorite babysitter.
(nonfiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 