The slap came before I could take a breath. I had just said the word “Jiao” the way Teacher Zhang had taught me, firm in my seven-year-old confidence. My mother, arising from her chair and putting down her knitting, hovered behind me in her wool jacket and sharp eyes, and didn’t agree. “It’s pronounced Xiao,” she corrected, her voice clipped, sharp. “But Teacher Zhang said Jiao,” I muttered and continued reading aloud, repeating it the way I had learned. Her hand sliced the air. “I’m a teacher too!” she snapped just before it landed across … Continue reading The Slap and the Word by Jean Romano→
I write in an accent interposed by war school closure, hunger and starvation. I write in an accent interposed by the absence of my father, the word that I stutter to utter due to the vague memory imposed by time despite the good things said about him. I write in an accent interposed by my mother’s many attempts to wrap her arms around the eight of us the way a hen would spread her wings to protect her chicks from the hawk. I write with an accent interposed By the stay-at-home policy of the … Continue reading Accent by Abraham Kedong Ali→
Black-faced sheep stand still in the valley along the Great Western Railway line, filling their bellies with the grass of the English countryside. Some hold onto the hillsides, their tails in the air, gathered in threes and fours. And near the train tracks, a stream runs, and shirtless young boys carry on in a waterfall. I travel through Western England, a few miles east of Bristol where outside the old village, rows of brown and grey stone homes lean against gardens of red roses. I’m heading for Portsmouth on a Sunday in June to stand … Continue reading A Tavern in The Village by David W. Berner→
I read in the paper today was the birthday of the artist Jasper Johns, 95. I didn’t realize he was still alive. I remember him from Art History classes fifty years ago in college, his works on display at the BMA. This sometimes happens, an actor or a singer I’d assumed dead shows up in a story in the newspaper, very much alive. And yet I often dream one or the other of my deceased brothers is still living, often a dream about an argument we’re having, and when I wake up, I’m still … Continue reading Jasper Johns by Charles Rummelkamp→
Along with her missing teeth, Ms. Goway’s head and puff of white hair were all I saw on the screen. She rattled her handcuffs and said she would try the case herself. It was the spring of 2024. I was a judge in California, handling arraignments, the stage in a case when criminal defendants made their first appearances, entered guilty or not guilty pleas, or—too often—asked for a delay. COVID had receded (sort of), but not its legacy of virtual hearings. While judges had to show up in court, even for brief matters like a … Continue reading Zoom Pleas by Anthony J. Mohr→
Genius of oval, ovum, overlap capable of great feats, holding back the waterfall of too much cleavage or in my case, too vast a high plain of a post-mastectomy chest, thanks to this duchess of metal modesty protecting glamour girls and plain ones. Eagle landing to save the day and a nylon bag from spilling dozens of caramels in the gutter. Savior of a million opening nights everywhere from Broadway to small town high school renditions of The Music Man or Rent. Grandmother of agility in pink or blue bent on putting the safe … Continue reading Ode to a Safety Pin by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg→
OCTOBER I awaken with a visceral heaviness, like dread, in my lower belly. My phone informs me it’s hours before dawn. Peering around the too-dark room, I remember: I’m in a rural Airbnb on a girls’ trip. I probably have food poisoning, I think grimly: it must have been the pizza. Using my phone to see, I stumble to the bathroom and pee. When I stand up, bright red fills the bowl, spotted with black clots like planets in a solar system. Last month I stopped using birth control after more than a decade. When … Continue reading The Anxious Overthinker’s Guide to Conception by Sarah Stubbs→
At age five, after my country doctor grandfather dies, fascinated by the black-and-white photos in his discarded depression-era medical books stacked in a corner of the barn, I study at length, extra carefully, one picture of a man with not only bulging gray lumps on his neck and chest, but also a black rectangle covering his eyes. Why was it put there? Holding my hands over my eyes, trying to imagine what it is like to have a disfigured body, hearing rumbles and pings merging and building to a kettle drum crescendo as rain … Continue reading It’s Raining by Ben Sloan→
………………………………………………………….Tarsila do Amaral (Brazil, 1928) Since you last crossed the still, moonlit waters Waters grown moody for the fainting dawn Dawn advancing but for the last starlight Starlight gifts of spellbound magic for two Two, we knew, both full with reflected moods Moods long-expressed in your rhythmic cycles Cycles of your full light, waning for rest Rest like a new moon to relight our flame Flame of your crescent hung to leave hearts full Full moon, I was drawn to your drifting charm Charm found in your safe and secret refuge Refuge, never forgotten, for … Continue reading The Moon by Kenneth Boyd→
I’d already missed two periods before I went to Planned Parenthood in Berkeley. I knew the result before a woman asked if I wanted counseling. She had a lovely voice. “I always say, you’re the one to ask the questions of yourself. Who do you see in yourself, Gina, what do you want?” I answered that I was thirty-five, unmarried, and didn’t know what I wanted. “But my hormones aren’t neutral,” I laughed. “They’re saying yes but I just don’t know.” She asked about my circumstances. “The father is not committed but I’d like him … Continue reading Distances by Barbara Baer→
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