Chicken Noodle Soup Maiden
Nineteen fifty-nine was a year of great uncertainty. What about the Russians? Why so many TV Westerns? But in Stuart Nation, Philadelphia’s West Oak Lane neighborhood, I tripped over my own vexing questions like they were too-long shoelaces—all swirling around a girl in my fourth-grade class whose disinterest intoxicated me. I was a happily-chatty kid most of the time, except when I was around Carol, whose studied cool and blond, bowler-cut hair usually left me incapable of saying more than hello. To the actual Carol, that is; I shared some incredible phantom-afternoon interludes with...
Read MoreLunch, 1968
“This is important,” my buddy Walter bellowed one lunchtime across the chatter and clatter of Germantown High School’s vast cafeteria. “And I can only say it once.” The topic that day in 1965 was color—specifically, orange, the hue of a stack of cheese crackers piled high and majestic near the cash register. I’d questioned the wisdom of paying for food we each had access to at home, albeit connected to peanut butter in the form of Lantz snacks. Why buy them when we have them in our kitchens? “These crackers,” the tall, handsome 10th grader said in stentorian tones...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of March 3 (Aging)
As Winter gradually ekes away and spring’s renewal approaches, it’s a good time to reflect on life cycles, and in particular, aging. “Recognized” by Michael Keshigian reflects on the nature of aging. Literally. In “Old Clyde and Mrs. Hill,” a short prose piece, David Sapp recalls elderly neighbors from childhood. “The Blurring of Edges” by David Sapp traces the changes in thinking from youth to maturity. “The Garden of Ramanatom” by Thomas Dorsett is a lyrical look at how nature’s life cycles mimic our...
Read MoreOld Clyde and Mrs. Hill
When I was a young man, Dad lost everything to the bank: Jet Cleaners, a marriage, our home on Glenn Road, our predictable, idyllic, suburban routine. When we moved to town, my little sister and I were decrepit, worn out after the catastrophe. Now everyone was too close together. We staggered up the broken, treacherously icy stairs, careening like Laurel and Hardy in winter to the apartment, the sagging, exhausted house on West Gambier Street. Jo’s Chateau of Beauty was in the back, Hyle’s Typewriter Repair in the front, Kenyon and civilization five miles east, the flat, monotonous...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Jan. 14 (Finding a Voice)
One of the best ways to learn and grow as a society is by listening to those whose voices are often overlooked. This week’s contributors do just that. “Eight Days in Prison” by Nicholas Chittick chronicles roughly a week of experiences in a medium-security Illinois prison. “Own” by Brooks Lindberg is a poem from the point of view of a young person dealing with family strife. “Dissolution” by Julie McNeely-Kirwan follows a man as he strives to get a lawyer to help him secure an unusual...
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