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)
A tabby, a calico, a Bengal, a Persian, even one of those hairless Egyptian numbers. Black cats, white cats, ginger cats, grey cats. They climbed all over each other, over the trees, in piles on the ground. Floor to ceiling, nothing but cats.
(fiction)
“Easing onto the Shoulder” by Kevin Grauke (poetry)
“Afternoon Session” by Nathanael O’Reilly (poetry)
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)
“It could be that our hearts beat in perfect alignment. Yet, it does not seem that Paul and I ever could have aligned ourselves so precisely.”
(nonfiction)
Author’s Note These pieces are part of a series of lipograms, writing that excludes one…
Meanwhile, the puppy, who, according to the book she bought, is color blind, lies in the grass and unsentimentally, methodically, stops beetles in their tracks with his paw. No ethical standards, this one. He does what he wants.
(fiction)
Another Chicago Magazine 