by Michael Sandler I usually begin with almond milk(from orchards siphoning the Colorado?)then plunk in yoghurt, banana, a few berriespossibly picked by migrants—I’ve seen them stoopedand wish there was a way of thanking themalso for the kale-spinach-Swiss chard mixof nutrients few of us get enough of,helping me vaunt the goodness…
by Chris Dungey After another successful visit to the Presbyterian rummage sale, I have to wonder—who in all the Congregation is built so much like me that their castoff coats fit perfectly, year after year? Will he spot me one day, out of my choir robe, wearing his discarded garment. Hey, I had one like that!…
by David Armand Most of my childhood I lived in a singlewide trailer,which was in the middle of a clearing in the woodsjust north of a little town in Folsom, Louisiana. But it wasn’t even a town. It was a village,and everyone there was just as poor as we were….
by D.R. James You’d like to move on beyond mean memory,skirt that peopled, hollow squalor, pack upyour numerous mind encampments whose smokycook fires now flicker, now flare on this or thatnostalgic hillside—sometimes like codedreminders, sometimes like brash blazes arousinganything but a simpering gratitudefor a brainscape stippled with so-called love.But then…
by William Heath I remember Aunt Hazel’s two-story wooden farmhouse by the roadside, the flat fields of northwestern Ohio stretching out in all directions until they hit a tree line left on purpose to cut down on the wind. The barns are a short walk from the house, and a rooster commands the area where we…
by David Armand Every time he bought a pack of cigarettes— Camel Special Lights, which I don’t even think they make anymore—my friend Nik would peel off the cellophane, open the box, and pull one out; then he’d flip it upside down so that the filtered end was at the bottom of the pack and the…
by Chris Dungey With first light and all through the bitter day, a dandelion lint of snow settles. Each filament gathers dust bunnies loath to press flat those beneath. For the first time in a month, a man stands in a mirror knotting a tie that has no silk-screen Santa monogram or carol button. A neighbor’s dog heralds an approaching…
by Mike O’Brien It seemed like a good idea at the time, mixing fish food in with seeds, suet, and lard to make fat balls to hang around the garden. Our feathered friends seemed to thrive on them. So we kept on making more. After a few months we began to notice subtle changes in…
by David Armand Last spring I planted a wisteria tree in the yard with my father. It was the third time we’d met in person, having known one another for only five years. Until then, neither one of us knew the other existed, but I had taken a DNA test on Ancestry and…
by Chris Dungey These ingredients were printed on a crème-colored envelope wedged between toilet tank and wall— an unopened sachet or potpourri. We couldn’t tell, but there were red line sketches—of leaves, sprigs, poinsettia. When for? The Holidays were past—but “Scents of the Season” it read, in English. Still, through February the pouch waited to be poured into an exhausted vase of…