Issue 9 / Spring 2017 Oh lung that keeps collapsing, you are stretched long and thin by your own weight, categorized as a health risk for any tall, skinny, Caucasian male. “Stretched like a water balloon,” the surgeon said. “The weight of the liquid pulls the...
Issue 9 / Spring 2017 They said all she’d need was five, maybe six outfits. Laundry twice a week. This place, this “extended studio” that was actually only a long L-shaped room. The social worker at the hospital after Mom’s emergency said what counted now was...
Issue 9 / Spring 2017 Read Part 1 in February’s Issue When our front door came alive one night with an explosion of knuckle knocking, it moved me from one level of exploration to the next. It was January of 1964 and every radio station in the city seemed to be...
Issue 8 / Winter 2017 W hat a nuisance, to wake up with a song already repeating in your head. The earworms I’m especially prone to are those infantilizing jingles with all their half-assed folk whistling and dreadful ukuleles. Like serenading simpletons, they...
Issue 8 / Winter 2017 “Y ’all are hungry,” Mama said, no question in her downcast whispery voice. “I’ll be back quick.” There was something definite behind the distraction in Mama’s careless hair, and in her careless face, and in the blue-veined hands...
