(Quotations appear in bold) You entered this world in 1933, five months after Adolph Hitler came to power. It did not take him long to find your Poland. Your Poland could not hide. …having spent my childhood and adolescence during the war and postwar years in Eastern Europe, I knew that real events had been […]
Issue 69
David Kear: Jed’s Dead
Then the vessel of day cracked open and the night seeped in like black water. Drunk on hard wine. I knew it was going to be my last night on earth. Smoked a whole pack of cigarettes waiting on it. Molly fell asleep in the back room, waiting for me to come to bed. But […]
Nicole Hefner: El Christo Grande
The first time I did it I was seventeen. Johnny and I had been planning it for months. It was a Saturday, and the sky was that kind of crazy deep-blue that makes you think of tea cups, then your mother, and before you know it you’re sitting under an imaginary apple tree watching your […]
Andrew Spear: Run Over (Witches, Chicken)
That was the day I was run over. Actually it wasn’t just me, but it was mostly me. I was standing closer to the car when it hit us — I was the one it actually ran over. She just bounced off the bumper. And then there was all the fried chicken — but I’ll […]
Joan Harvey: TEX(ts)
1. The White Geisha He is a man in his forties with a strong unlined face, just the faint traces of teenage acne scars, light skin and light hair. On Halloween he is allowed to wear the white silk wedding dress of a Japanese woman friend of his. She fixes him a wig of dark […]
Kim Church: Bullet
I know what a bullet can do. Everybody has an idea, everybody’s seen close-ups—gaudy wounds, geysers of blood, arms and legs flopping, life kathumping to a close. TV-bullet drama. But there are other, not-so-spectacular ways a bullet can work. My husband wore a bullet on a chain around his neck. He had blond chest hair, […]