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 […]
Fiction 92
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 […]