Issue 17 / Spring 2019 For a long time, I believed my father was the coolest of dads. He sat cross-legged on the living room rug, bongos tucked between his knees, accompanying Morton Gould and His Orchestra on the stereo (the album was Jungle Drums). No, my dad...
Issue 17 / Spring 2019 I called Benjamin from a Paris cafe on Avenue De Clichy. “I locked the keys in the apartment.” He laughed. “Tu rigole?” He spoke in French, I spoke in English, but we understood each other. “No, I’m so sorry, but I’m not joking.”...
Issue 17 / Spring 2019 For years, I was silent. I told no one. Today that changes, partly because of you, moving your eyes across this page, participating in my liberation. Or my re-traumatization. Or elements of each. I won’t pretend it’s just one or the...
The earth was cracked and troubled in Washington, D.C. If only you’d been listening, you would have decoded the garbled whisperings of Auntie Kay’s rapid decline, a sampaguita wilting, just like your bleeding hearts in summer, hot as morning mouth. Instead, you...
Excerpt from the memoir manuscript Good Fortune Next Time: Life, Death, Irony, and the Non-Profit Management of Very Small Colleges December 13, 1993 When Rod Gander, the president of Marlboro College and my boss, climbed down from the hissing, dripping 6:00...
By Angela Smith Kirkman I have an hour to myself with my notebook, and I’m stretched out on the ottoman like a cat. A warm fall breeze flows through the lofty windows of the flat we’ve rented in Istanbul (not Constantinople). As I put the final touches on today’s...
