I know it is broken as soon as I fall. I know because when I stand there is a lump right away. It is round and heavy like a new laid egg. I remember reading somewhere that that is what happens when you break a bone. The pain is clear. Not complicated like the pain […]
Contributors 92
Paul Hansom: Death Between Two Planes
He dies 10.30 their time, 4.30 mine. My cousin calls first with a repeated “I’m so sorry,” the word sorrysorrysorrysorry the only sense she can give me. Herself. As I listen, a freight train blows its mournful horn down in the valley. A bit of blues poetry to soften the onrushing facts: There are few […]
Barbara Nishimoto: Every Day She Shrank In Size
When I was nine a neighbor boy said something about my grandmother, an Issei who spoke only a word or two of English. When I think of it maybe the boy hadn’t meant to be rude, just curious. “Why does she look like that?” But he made a kind of face as though smelling something […]
Anthony Inverso: Open House
Back when I still had plans to marry, I thought of coupled life as an endless exercise in moving furniture. I pictured Alexis and I tumbling through the years replacing malfunctioning lamps, securing couches for safe travel, slicing through packing tape with pocket knives. Marriage was an opportunity for infinite remodeling. So when life canceled […]
Michael Zimmerman: Goodbye, Brother
The wind hissed through the cracks in the room Matt and I shared, and dogs filled our family’s nights with howls. We lived, back then, in a small apartment towards the far North end of Philadelphia, past Oak Lane and Kennisington, called Northeast Philly. It was 1995— the year Northeast made the news for having […]
Colleen O’Brien: The Deal
Here was the deal: William’s mother would pay for him to go to law school if he enrolled no later than the fall of next year. She would give him an apartment in one of her buildings in Bucktown. Carol knew from being in real estate that all the hip young people wanted Bucktown. They […]