A Taste for Speed
Hitching: 1968 Easing their spines on post-marked ends of property, the road-worn sag, sink, recall or forget some other lives in meaner contexts, a bag or bedroll dropped, just far enough a...
Read Morenothing more than feelings
to be alive & to feel that way: to be here like a smooth black worry stone there like a circling red tailed hawk everywhere like hunger like music like hydrogen like faith like the blood on the back steps of the Beauty Shop to be alive & to feel that way: to be strange like a charmed quark afraid like that face in your mirror empty like a row of yellow plastic chairs in the Greyhound Bus station in Dayton Ohio at 3am on February 19th, 1977 to be desperate & relentless like a shiny new stripmall proud like my parents on their wedding day shut down like the Troy Street Pool Hall on...
Read MoreWelcome to the North Country
After completing graduate school, my wife, Mikayla, and I, and Maryanne, our 2-year-old daughter, headed for a small town in the North Country where I started my teaching career. We rented a 12 x 60-foot mobile home, and our life in the North Country began. On the third morning, we were visited by the trailer park manager, Mr. Miller. “How do, folks? I come by t’ give y’ this list o’ park rules and tell y’ ’bout th’ roof and th’ heat tape.” He gave us a sheet of paper. “Them are th’ park rules. Y’ got t’ keep...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of Feb. 11 (Valentine’s Day)
This week of Valentine’s Day, our contributors examine love in multiple forms: Janice Westerling’s essay, “Superior Dairy,” captures the love within a family during a father-daughter outing. Peter Obourn’s short story, “Maureen and Sylvia,” perfectly depicts the first hints of young love, in a tale set in the 1950s. Natsumi Tsujimoto’s piece on Trophy Wife’s album, “Sing What Scares You,” is part review, part love letter. In the short story by James Curtiss, “She Walked in Beauty (Or at Least I’m...
Read MoreMistaking the Moon
I fear that I have made you feel at times too common: like the sound of a public school desk sliding across a dirty floor, or the sight of a shoelace dangling agreeably from its knot, or the smell of burnt toast or taste of a ham sandwich. You are so much more than a ham sandwich. You are wondrous in the same way cinnamon is wondrous as it dances and falls from its shaker, the way a porch light is wondrous when it winks rapidly right before it falls asleep forever, the way black ink is wondrous as it slides...
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