Issue 15

Issue 15.4 – Nonfiction

I was more interested in going to the homecoming dance than I was in Brad, the senior who invited me. It was my first year of high school, tenth grade, and Brad was a good-looking trumpet player who sat first chair. I had a perfect view of him from my vantage point in the percussion…

Issue 15.4 – Fiction

Grace was their miracle baby. Susan had picked Grace’s name because she felt sure, one-hundred percent, bone-deep sure, that she was a miracle. After four miscarriages in five years, Pete had wanted them to stop. The toll it was taking on them was too much, he’d said. The elation they’d felt the first time Susan…

Issue 15.4 – Poetry

The grandmother ever at my shoulder What harm another little nub of butter? A pinch of sage would lift the whole thing Navigating the gaps as nimbly now as she did In her dimly-lit kitchen with its three trip-up steps to sprinkle and stir Her jealous Jack Russell and me always lapping at…

Issue 15.3 – Nonfiction

I volunteered at the Jewish Family Service for many years visiting lonely elderly people who could no longer get out. When they called me for Marge they were looking for someone who liked to play Scrabble because Marge needed a partner. I was an English teacher, so it looked like a good fit. I could…

Issue 15.3 – Fiction

The journey from one near-bankrupt department store to the other takes eighteen minutes, at least while pushing a stroller. Under snow-fogged skylights, I trudge past a succession of dark storefronts, still locked behind their chain-mail fences, as my boots leave gray puddles on the just-buffed terrazzo. Tags dangle from rows of stacked merchandise, fluttering in…

Issue 15.3 – Poetry

Hardwood floor, stained, edges charred black years of praying, of playing, of crying Cobwebs in the windows, roaches on the walls, mice commuting between rooms, remnants of their travels cover our feet Wild cats commune in the backyard, meowing at the moon, stray dogs lurk nearby, growling, hungry for dinner The…

Issue 15.2 – Fiction

You know everything now: names of animals, flowers, trees; how to do chores. You can reach the clothesline and run errands and learn anything you copy down in your theme book. You’re twelve, but you haven’t got a mother to explain what’s coming. When you first started to swell up top, you thought you had…

Issue 15.2 – Poetry

Dear Mom: Remember when you used to tuck me in? White and pink crocheted blanket Nestled in next to the soft black cat Bedtime stories, wait! One more, please. Please? Remember those fights we used to have? We screamed at each other Doors were slammed, shattered You didn’t understand my hormones And I didn’t…

Issue 15.1 – Fiction

She listened to the rattling of their shackles and the sobbing of Prisoner 940 in front of her. His bawling had started hours ago when the guards put them on the bus: three men and her, with twice as many guards. They had been instructed not to make noise. She supposed crying didn’t count. She…

Issue 15.1

re- pair me with you again even though we have left pieces of us in our wake and each time we glue us back together the edges are askew But we can fill the gaps with who we have become Perhaps we will still fit together imperfectly Living in Singapore, India-born Uma Venkatraman is a journalist with…