Mud Season Review
Artwork by Lindsay Lamp
Hollywood Chuck, Patron Saint of Wonderment The only time I saw Chuck face-to-face was when he picked me up outside my Palm Springs hotel in his scarlet Jeep, his adult toy better known as “Big Red.” As he idled — the Jeep freshly hosed off and looking as pretty as a ruby slipper — he […]
Artwork by Sean Bw Parker
Pugilism 2020-2022 A week after my father’s 78th birthday, he has a stroke, and then another, and then it takes him six months to die. A little over a year later, my mother’s two bichons frisé dead-leg her from behind, and she falls down and dies from what the coroner calls “cardiopulmonary failure,” and that’s […]
Two Supplicants in the Queen City Here is my great-grandmother Natalie Reichert: sitting stick-straight, alone in a small, open buggy. Grinning. Her dark, windswept hair snakes over her shoulders. Tugging lightly at the reins of the horse, she appears both regal and carefree. Where and when it was taken isn’t clear. The setting is rural; […]
A Way Out Of Nowhere My stepdad, Jay, jumped on the hood of the car as Mom was backing out of the driveway, then kicked the windshield in to stop her from leaving. Tiny, clear-blue shards flew with enough force to stick into Mom’s face, hands, and arms. Glass also pelted me and my siblings […]
Artwork by Sjafril Riz
Would You Rather? By Sarah McKinley Would you rather lose your best friend or your life? Yeah, hard question. Let me help you imagine. Your friend. The one you met that sunny September morning in 1995. You see, the problem is, even though you call each other “friends” you finally fuck up that line after […]
Artwork by Peter Calder
My Father’s Legacy by Greta McGee I carry the weight of being someone’s only home, the North Star they use as guidance crossing borders. Baby girl, my father says to me unsolicitedly, everything I do is to protect, support, and defend you. You are my purpose. No one tells you how to be someone’s purpose. […]
The Atlantic Hotel By Sarah Harley Her heart was made of liquid sunsets. — Virginia Woolf There’s a hotel room in my mind. White walls and narrow windows with rippling glass, tall enough to walk through like a door. I watch the light as it travels through the room, from the sea just across […]
Artwork by Laura Cantor
Where a Mother Ends and a Daughter Begins by Melissent Zumwalt The buzzing of my cell phone startles me, piercing through my morning routine. As I grapple with the phone’s slick exterior, the caller’s name reads: unidentified, but the location of the phone number lists: Beckley, West Virginia. I reside 2,600 miles away from the […]
Grief Madelaine Zadik Grief is in my blood. Actually, my first contact with grief was through the amniotic fluid. When I was born, my mother had been grieving the loss of her sister Helga for ten years. However, she had lost more than a sister. Her mother died when she was thirteen and Helga […]
Inconceivable In Kansas City, Missouri, where I grew up, tornadoes are an uncomfortable fact of life. At least once every spring the sirens went off and we’d look up, like plucky wartime Britons scanning the sky for incoming Stukas. You’d think about what cover was available, where the nearest basement or ditch was. It […]
Artwork by Cherry Tung
The Best Bad Girl “The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live.” George Carlin The best part of that night was the before. The anticipation. I was a breathless 15-year-old, smitten with high school drama and risk taking, relentless in my nocturnal weekend prowls for adventure […]
A Touch of Dim Sum Eating dim sum is an emotional roller coaster—the excitement and exhilaration you get from creative dishes and intense flavors. The servers reveal each dish hidden inside their bamboo steamer in their cart like how Wheel of Fortune hostesses reveal each letter on their puzzle board. You never know what’s inside. […]
New Girlfriend Legs and ass powerful like a Quarter Horse’s. That ready speed. Her eyes, too, quick on the uptake. Soulful, dark brown eyes. What I notice first. That and the sweep of hair that swings forward when she bends to unleash her dog. A color that blends with the September leaves, a dirty-blond similar […]
Getting Up There We forgot the pancake mix. So, instead of eating at the campsite we have to drive back into town for breakfast. Plus, it takes way longer than we anticipate to reach the trailhead. A bridge is down for repair and the detour requires fifty miles along a narrow mountain road, the last […]
Artwork by Taryn Riley
Meet the Flintstones Our Cape Breton neighbourhood housed a middle school within walking distance of Cottage Road, and I use the term “walking distance,” loosely. It didn’t matter that we spent most of our lunch break walking in one direction or the other. It didn’t matter if it rained or snowed. What mattered was that […]
An Interview with Suzanne Siteman by Creative Nonfiction Associate Editor Andrew Miller “I think the physical world is on all of our minds, we often just don’t know where to drill down, what to look at first. That’s our opportunity.” –Suzanne Siteman You expressed valid ecological concerns without over-sentimentalizing. Was that an active decision on […]
Holy Water Midnight in Moorea, French Polynesia, and my daughters and I sprawl on the wide weathered planks of the dock beneath our room, the sky studded with stars, the ocean at rest, held together by the saturated black of the night. It is almost as quiet as it is underwater. Blacktip reef sharks frequent […]
Solution Phase Every Saturday morning, I take the last Lexapro in my blue pill organizer and then dutifully refill it. 10 mg a day. Them’s the ones that keep you from screamin’, my husband likes to joke in a gravelly voice. Screaming has never been one of my symptoms, but he’s not exactly wrong either. […]
It’s Time to Close the Book on My Mother Writing a memoir helped me understand her critical, controlling ways. But now I need my life back. Two hours before she dies, my mother lifts her head and tries to speak but can’t form words. She falls back on her pillow, panting. It stuns me into […]
Cut Here Not yet fourteen. Ninth grade. First day. First class. English I. My cover is blown—if not yet to everyone else, then at the very least, to myself. There will never be a day after this that I’ll be able to tell myself I’m not attracted to girls. I won’t be able to write […]
THE PENGUIN PROBLEM She looked like a stick-figure dog, the kind I drew as a child, with a downward-pointed triangle for a snout and two upward-pointed triangle ears. Her seated body, huddled and alert, formed a larger triangle, shaking and pathetic—exactly the kind of pathetic I wanted. The little black-and-white dog was supposed to be […]
Snake Bits I’m alone in the passenger seat of a parked car when I see a huge black serpent with a cobra-like head hovering above my side window. Horrified, I stare at its cold green eyes, vacant and unblinking. I’m wondering whether I should just hold very still or fish around for the keys to […]
Front Range Triptych I. Storehouse of the West’s Great Passing On the last Saturday in February, on a day just warm enough for the task at hand, my sisters and I, with our partners and parents, met in Greeley, Colorado, to empty mom and dad’s storage shed. Inside this rented 10 x 25-foot metal […]
The Memory Unit Aunt Jo lives in the memory unit of a retirement home outside of Knoxville. It’s new, spacious, with a little café that sells snacks, a cafeteria with menus like a restaurant, and polished hardwood floors. It’s clean, smells good, and is associated with a church next door, where residents can go to […]
