Chockfull O’Nuts mixing in with Elizabeth’s sulfuric Southerly breeze as a groom badly bruises both of his shins on a turnstile-hop mishap trying to catch a commuter train instead of bedding down his bride on hay suffused with camel piss from God knows where and insects from Peru crushed by the tens of thousands to […]
Contributors 70
Nancy Kuhl: Apology for New Wives
Cigarette smoke twelve miles from the ocean and the birds in the wall are beginning to escape. One by one. They always leave the box behind, the telegrams and empty envelopes. All of it flimsy and so much missing. The hoax of relic bones and the goddess of hinges are buried in the still frozen […]
Erica Kaufman: Rides
The day I left my watch behind, the bus driver threatened never to stop. I barely noticed, too busy languaging and basking in my walkman’s splendid isolation. Wish I wore sunglasses even though windows are tinted and it’s dark outside. New Brunswick. Where the other side of the river is another world, where I wear […]
James Hoch: A Recollection
I was a wiry, spike-haired, nineteen year old, hanging out in Philly, places like Bacchanal, Dobbs, Franks, when I walked into a used bookstore on South Street. A kid from Jersey, I had an idea that some lyrics I was writing for a band were probably not going to cut it in the latest post-punk […]
Phebus Etienne: Nicole’s Rhapsody
That night at the hospital, as I watched my mother sleep, I remembered summer, the day I talked her into taking two buses to the movies. She had complained about the thickness of her sturdy arms exposed by the sleeveless rose dress, Easter lilies on the gathered skirt, bell-shaped petals diagonal on the bodice. Her […]
Stephen Dunn: Dickens in Pleasantville
It is neither the best nor worst of times, no children begging in the streets, or fathers coming home coughing, covered with soot. The mills, mines, and factories are the nearby casino hotels, all in one, and Dickens sees in the workers’ eyes a familiar dulling of the spirit. But they have jobs. In their […]