She was four-foot-something, ancient, squat, and elegant. I assumed she was Russian, though I only ever heard her speak once. She was born before there was such a thing as the Warsaw Pact, before the Cold War, before the founding of the Bolsheviks. Even in her diamonds and furs, she did not seem out of place in our eleven-story, turn-of-the-century university building, nestled between Harlem and the Hudson, where the elbow-patched faculty of the 1970s lived alongside the Old World émigrés of earlier decades. I could already see over her hat by the time I … Continue reading The Hit Lady by B.K. Marcus→
Ferment Orchard in February. Branches, matted as hair, litter the rows after pruning. Soil, strewn with old fruitfall, soaks in last season’s rancid sun seeped from these gnawed globes: Ambrosias, Auroras, Pink Ladies, now rusted and fleshless. Their skins peel back like those of fallen tomatoes in August, left to blister and stink. Small black birds sit motionless against blank and separate sky, below which, earth in hibernatory ferment concocts from sweetest Melus this bitter brandy for weathering out. One wavers a bit in its frieze. Even for them, a little ivresse eases the … Continue reading Ferment by Lucy Alford→
Swimming in Akumal You could learn to live here without ever measuring time in linear seconds or distance in the miles we journey. Everything here is cyclical and circular like the half moon bay we swim in. Sun and wind are nature’s runes, marking summer solstice, or storms churning in from sea. You could learn to forget here, drifting in emerald water among sea turtles and fish the color of fruit–kiwi, mango, papaya– and all around you, coral reefs rising like sacred temples from the ocean’s floor, their exotic bloom luring you beyond the … Continue reading Swimming in Akumal by Jo Kennedy→
Sorrow Sometimes I think I own sorrow like the man who parades his macaw up and down the shopping street, shit on his back, smiling. The bird is sweet and talkative, but his wings are clipped. Sorrow kept too long forgets to leave, forgets it belongs to everyone and no one, in a rainforest smashing Brazil nuts with a hundred other wildly colored beasts. Whitney Roberts Hill has been a blog contributor, columnist, book reviewer, and content editor. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in anthologies and online publications, including The American Book … Continue reading Sorrow by Whitney Hill→
Of all the scenes I could replay to rewrite or undo, one I go back to one again and again. It’s the end of my therapy session and I sit up and slip into my shoes, pick up my purse, when Dr. Bob asks to speak with me a minute. I look up at him, unused to facing him. “Let’s sit in the waiting area,” he says, and slides the pocket door open. I follow him out to the blue family room with a bar. Sliding glass doors open on two sides, facing the Intracoastal … Continue reading First Favor by Joan Mazza→
When the bus drops Diana off in the afternoon, her mother is still at work. She lets herself into the silent, spotless apartment, a large box of Oreo cookies and two bags of Mounds in her embrace. Dropping her heavy backpack, she heads for the bathroom, embarking on a rigid routine from which she never wavers, not in the minutest detail. She strips and dumps the austere British School uniform into the laundry basket. The undergarments, all in pink, a child’s color, are tossed in next. Then she takes a hot shower, soaping herself over … Continue reading Nothing Broken by Anita Lekic→
First Dog: A Love Song You didn’t even want it. You said it was much too nervous, inappropriate for us who had never owned a dog, and wrong for our cold climate. It would have to wear a sweater, we would become the sort of people who put a sweater on their dog. You said a greyhound was appropriate for racing or for show, not for friendship, not to love. It would try to hunt, I told you, would track small cats and squirrels but obey when we said heel. If we let it … Continue reading First Dog: A Love Song by Rachel Willems→
Reno and Smiley in Verona Walking not far from Juliet’s graffitied house, a window gives its music to the alley below— Appalachian spring tripping on love. I hear I Wouldn’t Change You if I Could. * An unintended plot comes back to me— how fifty years ago we drove south to Stuart’s Draft to hear Reno and Smiley play, a hay wagon above us, haloed by the setting sun, singing their country’s tunes. Don’s banjo sowed the seeds of bluegrass with Lee’s March and Don’t Let Your Sweet Love Die. Have you forgotten the … Continue reading Reno and Smiley in Verona by Frederick Wilbur→
Thirteen is a hellish year. I don’t understand why evolution didn’t just let us skip from twelve straight to fourteen. Twelve is really cool. You’re a sixth grader in grammar school (as they called it when I was a boy), the oldest and biggest of all the kids. Everyone respected you. At fourteen, you were a year into adolescence, beginning to be comfortable with it (overlooking, of course, the pimples and the squeaky voice). But thirteen? At thirteen, you were all of a sudden among the smallest at your junior high school, the one everyone … Continue reading Thirteen by David Gardner→
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