by Jacob M. Appel | Feb 20, 2016
* I am indebted to Leonard Michaels and his short story, “In the Fifties,” to which this essay is intended as a response. In the eighties I failed to learn fractions. I was frequently lonely. I stood in right field and wore a baseball glove on my head. I lived in a...
by Michael Gracey | Feb 8, 2016
As Simon Peter and his brother Andrew toss their nets early in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus appears and says that if they follow him, he will make them “fishers of men.” That they immediately forsake their work and go with him is usually seen as proof of their faith,...
by Randy Osborne | Feb 6, 2016
She was a tall, bony girl with long dark hair, bright green eyes and a thick, wide nose bent so firmly over her upper lip that the flesh seemed to have melted together. Boys on the playground pressed their noses flat against their faces and honked her name. Other...
by Jack Christian | Jun 20, 2015
Outside the apartment building, our groundhog was munching early stalks in the side-yard. He stopped to stare when I pulled into my hard-dirt parking place. He did this in deceit of the trap our landlord Allen had laid to catch him. Yards behind, at the back fence,...
by Jack Christian | Jun 15, 2015
My student loan coupon book was thumbtacked just below my MFA degree. My payment had been due on the 4th, but if received by the 25th would be considered “not late.” This lenience was a small thing, one of a very few, to recommend my loan-holding company. It nearly...
by Jack Christian | Jun 10, 2015
Around Northampton I’d taken to making the Corolla skid on icy side-streets, attempting to demonstrate to Anna how to steer into the skid, attempting to make the car’s antilock braking system utter its warning noise. On un-slick roadways, there was a game of pulling...
