Maybe it’s post-bad-date heartache. Maybe it’s because you’re sitting in a burgundy convertible, a vintage ‘67 Mustang, top down, parked in the gas station’s only handicapped spot, June bugs butting the red and yellow Kangaroo sign above. Because it’s minutes until midnight. Because it’s only you and the pencil-necked attendant who watches you through the […]
Four Poems by Stephanie Cawley
January 27, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Heaven My mother stuffed me in a starched dress and dragged me to church once, when I was six. I traced faces in the wood grain of the pews and fell asleep to old women clicking rosaries above my head. I dreamed a heaven made of buttons and string. Now I shut my eyes to […]
“How Furniture Feels” by Fatimah Asghar
January 25, 2012 by Leave a Comment
Click here to view “How Furniture Feels” by Fatimah Asghar. Because of its format, this essay is available only as a PDF. More nonfiction at Used Furniture.
Such Magnificent Taste and Texture and Feeling: A Conversation with Caits Meissner and Tishon
January 24, 2012 by 1 Comment
Caits Meissner, winner of the OneWorld Poetry Contest, attended the 2008 inaugural Pan-African Literary Forum in Accra, Ghana where she studied under Pulitzer Prize winner Yusef Komunyakaa and other luminaries from the literary African diaspora. In addition to her own self-released work, she has been published in various literary journals. She is also an arts […]
Two Poems by Abby Koski
January 23, 2012 by 2 Comments
We Wait We see ourselves in the reflections of revolving store doors and wonder what it would be like if someone broke the glass. If someone punched us in the face to wake us up, throw a shopping bag through the window. We touch our reflections without seeing them. We leave pieces of ourselves in […]
Alabama Card Table: Arts and Literature from the Deep South: Episode 1.2: Writers and Football
January 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment
This is the latest in Greg Houser’s Alabama Card Table: Arts and Literature from the Deep South. To go to the column page, please click here. A strange thing happens to writers when they come to get an MFA at the University of Alabama: they get real stoked about college football. This week we’ll talk […]
“Monsters” by Tessa Fontaine
January 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
They fell all at once, a Saturday, late-morning, late September sun warm on all the still-tanned shoulders of good people doing yard work. We were washing the car. Or, actually, taking a break before washing the car. You were wearing shorts and socks with little balls at the heel because you thought they were funny, […]
“MeloMosh Mavericks” by Meg Tuite’s Exquisite Quartet
January 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment
This is the latest in Meg Tuite’s Exquisite Quartet. To go to the column page, please click here. Mazurka Here’s the deal. You go to a baseball game. You’re a spectator so you sit, you eat hotdogs, drink beer and you watch. You clap, you scream, rally for your team, rage on the other team, […]
Review: Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus
January 19, 2012 by 3 Comments
The Reviewed: Even Tough Girls Wear Tutus by Deborah Jiang Stein The Reviewer: Judy Clement Wall *** A little over halfway through her memoir, EVEN TOUGH GIRLS WEAR TUTUS, Deborah Jiang Stein writes, “How is it really possible anyone is born in prison? I have never met anyone with a story like mine…” In the pages […]
“Five in the Afternoon” by Molly Bond
January 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment
There are invisible cities behind your eyes. I could pull up a lawn chair and watch small figures walking and singing and giving birth and dying, rushing in and out of the skyscrapers of your pupils, the brick buildings of their corners. But something always captures your attention, and you turn away from me, towards […]
