Can’t You Talk, Girl?
by Donna Miscolta
Issue No. 277 ~ June, 2020
In kindergarten, I discover I am brown. Or rather, what it means to be brown.
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Essay Archives
Seek the Beauty, Want the Passion, Hold the Wild or What I Learned about My Desires while Reading Melissa Matthewson’s Tracing the Desire Line
by Alexandra Panic
Issue No. 276 ~ May, 2020
Merriam-Webster’s dictionary defines the term “domesticity” as the quality or state of being domestic or domesticated. The definition doesn’t offer enough clarity if you don’t continue the thread by looking into words “domestic” or “domesticated.” Domestic: reduced from a state of native wilderness so as to be …
How to Cook Beans from Scratch – A Recipe or Hoarders
by Rita Pellegrini
Issue No. 275 ~ April, 2020
I am sitting by the kitchen table sorting beans. I am called to this task because it requires attention to detail and small fingers – both of which, at the age of ten, I possess. I never, however, understood how those tiny pebbles get inside …
The Novelist, Nowadays
by Conor Madigan
Issue No. 275 ~ April, 2020
I At once irreplaceable and hors concours in the book business, further, tact and consideration in the treatment of, the more vital, because, though often arrogant and unreasonable, importance allies with considerable helplessness, insecurity, and anxiety; The Novelist. Publishing history enshrines minuscule minority rather than mere producers …
A Swimmer’s Story
by Elizabeth Papazian
Issue No. 274 ~ March, 2020
1 I dive straight and deliberately into the pool and slice the still water into a thousand ripples. The sun streams through the glass gym walls. My body glides through the chilly lane toward the finish of a lap. The pungent smell of chlorine fills …
Sniffles
by Kaci Skiles Laws
Issue No. 273 ~ February, 2020
Our hamsters are too still in their cage, so I stick my finger through the grates to curl around the one I think is mine. Without confirmation of a bite, a droplet of my blood, I can’t be certain. I am sure he is too …
Dig
by Kaci Skiles Laws
Issue No. 273 ~ February, 2020
My first time visiting the beach in two-thousand and ten is a blizzard. I arrive late in the day. It is early May. The sun is already sinking into the ocean, but I still need to taste salt and bathe in its reflective face. I …
Dig
by Erin Taylor
Issue No. 270 ~ November, 2019
They handed me the shovel and ordered me to dig. With each pound I gained. With each wrinkle I acquired. With each stretch mark I earned. Every time, they barked at me to dig. “Dig!” The Victoria Secret angels strolling down the runway, condemning me …
Why I Love the Grocery Store
by Linnea Cooley
Issue No. 267 ~ August, 2019
“In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations….” – Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket in California.” Like most people, I go to the grocery store. Unlike most people, I spend a lot of my free …
Inside Silence
by Alexandra Panic
Issue No. 266 ~ July, 2019
The first weekend of May, I attended Vortex, a three-day writers’ conference that took place at Whidbey Institute, on Whidbey Island, Washington. Organized by Hedgebrook, a leading organization helping women writers, Vortex is an annual event that celebrates women authoring change. During the conference, I was fortunate to lodge on site, on the property of Whidbey Institute, in a tiny cottage surrounded by tall evergreen trees and narrow trails that branched like sunrays, leading deeper into the forest.
