TO: Right Brain FROM: Me SUBJECT: Annual Evaluation Your full Annual Evaluation Report will be sent shortly but I want to go over some of the highlights briefly. First of all, thank you for finally returning the questionnaire. Frankly, Corporate was getting a little peeved at the delay and hadn’t bought your excuse that it spontaneously burst into flames. Chumsworth said he saw you rummaging through the piles of clutter on your desk muttering, “It was just here…” Be that as it may, we’re glad you returned it although some of the executive team didn’t … Continue reading Memo to Right Brain by Will Conway→
Her car was still sprinkled with debris from her recent move to the city. A misshapen yoga mat, tea towels, her boyfriend’s guitar pedals, a bedside lamp; the persisting clutter of merging lives. Wishing she’d taken off her cardigan, she baked in the afternoon sun. The air-conditioner was broken, pushing a current of hot air around the interior, and making the berry-scented freshener tap softly against the windscreen in the artificial breeze. Checking her mirrors, she signaled to change lanes. She always felt better—more insulated—driving in the middle lane in the city. The traffic was … Continue reading Encounter by Lori Franklin→
“Mother?” Plump, magnified, younger lips open and close. “Mother?” How many years must she hear it? Mother Mother Mother. How many years already? The lips are those of a luminous fish suspended in water when it ceases to swim back and forth. A fish that hangs in eerie silence, mouth dropping open and then locking upward as it takes in water before pumping it back through the gills. Breathing. Once, as a child, she visited the aquarium at Belle Isle. Nina held her hand as they moved slowly through the large gallery beneath an arched … Continue reading Belle Isle Aquarium by Amy Kenyon→
Bobbie Ellen leaned against the wall of the arcade at Minnow Lake Campground and squinted at Nick Baker. The first wave of a thick Oklahoma summer had sent her inside with the rest of the gang, where the dark room and A/C kept them all from drowning in the heat. Not that being inside offered much relief, since Nick hogged every inch of cool with his seventeen-year-old self as he stood in front of the air conditioner and worked his usual game, Primal Rage. He dropped fifty cents into the coin slot and played another … Continue reading The Peninsula by Christi Craig→
“I passed through Bologna once on the way to…” That’s how my favorite Italian city is usually featured in travel narratives. Tourists know its train station, a surprisingly modest building considering how many travelers are propelled through it and on to the rest of Europe. It is a squat two-story rectangle with an unfussy columned entrance. Its design is bereft of allusions to the excitement of rail travel. The architect might have had a post office in mind. Italian train stations always combine hurry and lassitude; waiting punctuated by last-minute alterations in the track assignments. … Continue reading Thinking About the Bologna Train Station by Stefanie Newman→
I’ve kept an idea journal for as long as I can remember. Whenever a word, sentence or story idea strikes my fancy, I jot it down and date the entry. One day, I thumbed through the pages, noticing dates on entries. A pattern emerged. Whenever I felt at peace with my life, I saw numerous entries, many of which inspired stories and essays. However, the number of entries decreased to almost none when I was experiencing turmoil. One year stood out. I was stuck in a conflict with a person who had no interest in … Continue reading The Effect of Forgiveness on Creativity by Deborah M. Prum→
Just like the adage about loving yourself before being able to love another person, I’ve come to understand that in order to write with depth, you first have to learn to write about yourself. I grew up in a close-knit Philadelphia neighborhood of row homes and old-world tailors, Holocaust survivors, first and second generation East European Jews. Although the streets were rich with stories, I had internalized society’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed obsession and was diverted from appreciating them. (Ironically, I’d read Issac Babel’s accounts of his Jewish Odessa neighborhood with passion, lamenting why I’d been born … Continue reading First Steps by Harriet Levin Millan→
Michael fled his village in South Sudan at the age of five. He trekked a thousand miles through war zones to arrive at a series of refugee camps where he lived for a decade. As a child at Kukuma Refugee Camp, Michael played soccer using a blown up latex glove fished from a trash bin outside the hospital tent. He learned to play chess and checkers under the punishing sun from old-timers who sat bereft of their children and their land. One of the most life-negating situations a person can face is to live without … Continue reading A Place To Flee by Harriet Levin Millan→
The view from the bus station was disappointing. All I could see was the traffic on Calliope. That, and the bottom of the Causeway, all concrete and metal, darkened by decades of weather and exhaust. The fall air was saturated with car fumes and diesel: a smell that always gave me a headache. I sat, as patiently as I could, on a metal bench that was peppered with rust and dried bird shit. I waited and hoped that Mary remembered I was coming. Eventually, I saw her working her way towards me, weaving between the … Continue reading City of the Dead by Caleb N. Humphreys→
I haven’t seen Dave this excited in months, since before our son left for college. “We’ll see a compressed version of Arnold’s life,” he says, sprinkling his fingers like falling fireworks. “Can you imagine? You’ll love it. It’ll be like one of our movie dates, but better.” “Well, okay,” I say. “I guess we can go.” “It sucks for Arnold having leukemia and all,” Dave says, checking his phone. “But there’s nothing we can do, you know?” We first learned about the Deathwatching app while dropping our son off at his dorm back in August. … Continue reading Date Night by Nicholas A. White→
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