This is where we start: a snowstorm, the memory of a scarf wound tightly, a stumbling trip to the car. A page is devoted to the doorway moment, collision of interior and exterior. Mother slams the door behind her. There will be other natural disasters, a tree splitting broken glass hurricane, an acre-burning fire, some […]
Issue 70
James Hoch: Antarctica
Years later, driving down Hwy 741, fields of white, thickets of fog, my car a mumbled prayer in the gauze, a sleigh, black and Amish, lefts onto the road, its horse harnessed and thudding on, its hooves muffled against the snow. A man staring forward holds the reins steady, steady. I gear down, the engine […]
Kathy Graber: Wildwood in Spring
Late March. I wish it were a better place. Outside the hardware store, we discuss its malaise, kick the curb, as though it were the tire of a used car. The sky’s a thin blue. the color of a small boy’s Easter suit, a dirty cloud patch at the elbow. We’ve got out heads under […]
Stephen Dunn: Poe in Margate
To come back and learn his alcoholism was an illness–Poe had to laugh at that. He knew the vanity of excuses better than anyone, and how good self-destruction feels when one is in the act of it. Still, he thought, you must be sober to write your autobiography, set things straight. He’d give up all […]
Darin Ciccotelli: Television
It just so happens to be at this point . . . The television’s on, muted. And the ocean reduces its face. Ebb upon ebb, Soap after soap, each retreating, fleet. Close-ups remit themselves but reducing, rude. Waves rescind themselves from the shore. to the tube. Faces floating, cellophaning like Retreat from the mile-markers. Denude […]
Susan Briante: NJ Transit’s Northeast Corridor: A Literary Memoir
A Life magazine cover from July 28, 1967 depicts the body of an African-American child crumpled in the street. A pool of his blood stains the pavement beneath him. His face lies in shadow, his wound unseen. His small fingers curl toward the camera. A headline proclaims: “Newark: The Predictable Insurrection.” My mother drinks coffee […]