I was stunned. Sitting there staring at them, I could not believe their power—that they could make the debt, the beast, vanish in the blink of an eye.
(nonfiction)
By sharing her personal stories, Petro shows us how to travel our own long field between who we were before—before the divorce, the accident, the grief, whatever profound losses shape us—and who we became after, who we are always becoming.
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Like a twig afloat on a sea of dirty towels, the feeling inside me, laid out on the countertop of my soul, filleted and sweating in the humid air. And yet, wonder eludes the twirling gearhulk of my heart.
Hawk is an everyman, a representative of everyone human. And—like Christian in John Bunyan’s moral allegory A Pilgrim’s Progress, like Dante in The Divine Comedy—Hawk is on a journey to the Godhead.
In the morning, you paced the sand like you were trying to find stable ground. “I am in control,” I thought I heard you say. You did a meticulous job of packing up our tent.
(fiction)
Medellín is a dreamscape. It’s a parlor show best accompanied with multiple soundtracks. It’s part paradise, it’s part fevered hell, it’s all forms salvation.
(fiction)
“Sometimes if you give away your language, you give away yourself,” Taiyon Coleman tells interviewer Deborah Copperud. “There’s nothing more violent than to do that.”
“It is not fear, but something that is beyond language.”
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Our Holocaust education had gone beyond the bounds of institutional sanction. We were now in uncharted waters.
(fiction)
Even a Banyan tree lives longer than an emperor.
He is free, Bexley thought, free enough to float on that breeze, rise and soar with seagulls if he wanted to.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
We each take what we can / from the angels that visit us.
It’s in these moments that Hobbs Hesler subtly presents space for the reader to ponder the lessons we learn at any age, picking apart notions that we should get second chances.
(reviews)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
It is disrespectful to sleep over the stones / of the insane without dreaming our dreams.
Your body must not have been listening to the positive mantras. It doesn’t have a clue what to do when the time comes.
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
as if it matters / that you drowned in freshwater, tap water, or first / in yourself.
(poetry)
My mother was certain my brother had planned his own death, but she wasn’t sure how he did it.
My sister wrapped her arms around me. I did not cry. I felt nothing.
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books:
Yesterday’s rosy cheeks we thought would stay. / Today our hair has turned more and still more gray.
I’d assumed I’d share my story with him over a beer when he was in his late twenties. A fun anecdote not a cautionary tale.
(nonfiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“I wish I could once again see / your benches where the weary come to sit / and watch their burdens bloom into butterflies.”
He wonders if his life has been a lie. Was he ever really a selenophile? Were the yearly parades a waste of time? The protests. The fights for equality.
(fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new books
“For once, I don’t want to call love a feral cat; / I want to forgive myself the way water / forgives everything.”
I have stories and photographs to remind me. But the rest is scattered like the 509th on that beach.
(nonfiction)
where were you // when you heard it / who were you with / what did it make you feel
Sudden understanding has snapped me from her side like a branch from a tree in strong wind.
(fiction)
I dreamed a lot that night, many dreams and deep dreams, and more nights followed with dreams like that.
All that’s left of the baby is the rattle. / All that’s left of the granny is her knitting.
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