I once held my cousin in a Dixie cup. At least a part of him. The improvised committal on the banks of Nottoway Swamp was a fitting send-off for a man who wanted no ceremony. Prone to eccentricity and melancholia like many of my clan, Cousin Bill had requested only that we scatter him after the annual family reunion in tidewater Virginia. Over BBQ, collard greens, and caramel cake at the Ruritan building, we lit a candle for him and Alice Page, our other casualty that year, then offered the swamp excursion for those who … Continue reading Little Cups by Alex Joyner →
I Like the Story Of the watch my father gave my mother How it stopped whenever they fought, except that is not the full story, the whole one. In the beginning there was a hard-earned dollar then another and another in a jar. And a jeweler in Hazard on a bull hot summer noon, the boy charging in, a gold chain paid to his keeping, and his face, which glowed but did not show yet that love is a stop-start thing unwound and lapsed into the silence of a drawer. Collecting years of bitter dust, … Continue reading Stories by Sharon Ackerman →
I run a writers’ retreat in a nineteenth-century farmhouse on the James River in Norwood, Virgina. My quarters are at the rear of the three-story house and consist of a large country kitchen with a woodstove, a mudroom, and a staircase leading up to my bedroom and small office. On the morning of February 7th I pick up my sixteen-year-old nephew at the Charlottesville airport. I spot him waiting at the baggage. He has grown taller since I saw him last. A lean boyish body and freckled nose, his light brown hair in a Westside … Continue reading A Plague Tale by Trudy Hale →
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