The toast pops & I flinch like a suspect—
everything lately has been too warm,
too sudden,
too much like your name in the dark.
(poetry)
Tag: writing
Taller today, in emptied summer city
the height of the deceased singer
five foot five, weight one twenty
people with basement apartments
were short and wore one-piece
bathing suits to beaches and lakes
(poetry)
We were never lovers. I’m not sure he has lovers, other than the music. We weren’t even really friends, but I did once make him cry. (fiction)
A Friday evening, a blinding headache, and the dreaded return to an empty apartment. For Lucy, even the familiar walk home feels like an ordeal. (fiction)
The latest in our FORTHCOMING series of excerpts from new and recent books.
I thought I was
responsible. I was not large enough
for the knowledge.
When I couldn’t take it anymore, I went to Brett’s work and asked him, point-blank, what he saw in his new girlfriend Stella… (fiction)
An underreported story of the lived experience of children of political activists who embrace violence as a tool of resistance. (review by Karen Paley)
In the kid culture I experienced, we all knew each other’s religion, but it was not a significant separator, or even a reliable indicator, as to who you were likely to befriend. Greater significance might be tethered to whether you rooted for the White Sox or the Cubs. (nonfiction)
In the morning Hank Jenkins sold me a ten-foot by sixteen-foot United States flag and cautioned me about terrorists. (fiction)
After a long hospitalization, my father returns home to die on January 2025’s coldest day—the Thursday after Orthodox Christmas. The packed snow on the steep, gravel driveway leading to his house is a slick, icy sheet… (nonfiction/Ukraine)
