At the bar, the man’s buddy’s eyes scavenge in arcs for women ambulating as the man tried to explain why he hadn’t quite gotten over his wife’s betrayal and otherwise moved on, ground these beans of wisdom into flour, kneaded them into bread and so forth, except the metaphor of bread was like the seed […]
Contributors 83
Wendy Noonan: Loom, Luminous
There’s the platter of meats laid out for our guests; wine, deviled-egg sandwiches; and the open field, scrubby and littered, under the fire escape where the kids go to smoke; there’s the broken down Toppys furniture truck in that field, and the old men walking up Mississippi smelling like cigars and fifty years of dumb […]
Paul Lisicky: First Birthday
War in the news. Hunger in the news. What of the following could stand up to that? The waitress set down the plates. Car noise rolled in from the street. The rotisserie chicken so spicy and sweet, my eyes watered. After I’d finished my own plate, I started eating off of Mark’s. The waitress came […]
Elizabeth Hazen: Eve at the Stop N’ Shop
There is a science to my selection: I take two of everything: artichokes plastic bags of yellow corn green beans asparagus Peaches fist in my hands My cart sinks: nine gallons of milk six dozen eggs butter sharp cheddar burlap sacks of rice boxes of pasta jars of sauce frozen peas crinkling like static I […]
Sophia Galifianakis: Of What is Made
I. Loose threads reach down my rib and cross the bone, the cage of ink my body is; and then II. travel through the needle’s gaze: to mend, yes. Of strands and knots, let’s say a history of stitches makes the garment whole. For possibility: III. a hole. What is cataracts, after all, but a […]
James Engelhardt: Pierogi (Polish)
Simple food, really, the sour shells folded over filling—a kind of dumpling to boil and fry with butter and onions but imagine a boy coming back to his house of accented newspapers after an afternoon watching Judy Garland turn rosy after landing in Oz and the smell of popcorn caught in his hair crimped pierogi […]