I met the juggling master, Brian, for my first lesson, in a park he’d named on the north side of town, an area I don’t know too well. When I asked over the phone how I would recognize him, he snorted. Sure enough, wind whipped hard through the bare branches and there he was on […]
Issue 75
Matt Debenham: Beard of Bees
Try not to think of the bees as stinging you, I tell my son. Think of them as snuffling. Like a dog would do! “But it hurts,” says Jasper. His eyes still hold the last of his tears. The real waterworks are only minutes gone, the boundless, shameless wailing of a six-year-old. “Okay, well, to […]
Steven Collis: Potty Training in a Gas Station Bathroom
I read once that some potty-training children emotionally invest in their first crap, as if it were a part of them they don’t want to lose. So in the gas station bathroom, my wife sobbing in the car, I try to show patience as Campbell frets over his poop bobbing in the toilet. But my […]
Miriam N. Kotzin and Bill Turner: A Writing Partnership
For us to be working together is about as likely as being struck by lightning, a comparison that for us holds particular personal significance. After all, when we first read each other’s work, we were sixteen hundred miles and cultures apart. Bill Turner was in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico teaching and doing web design for a […]
Miriam N. Kotzin and Bill Turner: Softy
“Spin me. Roll me around in the corner of your mind. Cynicism is so passé. I’m the electric pulse of your brand new conscience. Kiss me and feel the surge,” Voice says. Martin has been hearing the voice for weeks. He’s been afraid to tell anyone. He doesn’t want to sound like one of those […]
Gerald Zipper: Pride
I lapped up good words like a cat laps milk my mother showed my first hodge-podge poem a pudding to patriotism sugar in my veins cooking up images of pluck and daring I ran off to the army slicked my creases bloused my pants preened like a khaki cat but ears were fractured and sobs […]