Category: Blog

Middle Earth by Robert Beveridge

Lower the boom, lower the cheese, lower the flag and see who still salutes. Pieces at half eight, a basket in the Presidential rose garden, unsure which restroom is safe or desirable. You find you can dip pretzels in anything once you’ve had a couple of joints and they still taste good. Breast milk took Read More

The Audiologist Said I Can Hear Grass Growing by Rochelle Jewel Shapiro

At Seven Seas diner sits a mother, stilland pale as an ivory carving—white hair pulledinto a tiny topknot, eyes—soft gray, open wide,barely blinking. Her face, breasts, belly, arms and legs are round like The Venus of Willendorf.  Her daughter faces her with the same face, but her hair is dark, flowing, her body lithe, long, her eyes trained on her Read More

The Field Party by Darren Demaree

#50 i know the boneshaker i know the bones i know my father believed that only he was entitled to take deep breaths in our home ohio is full of fathers like that some of them gather at the field party to talk shit about us where we can hear them too many of my brothers Read More

Bread of Life by Laura Bass

From December of last year onward, I have thought about bread every day, without exception. It started about six months after I got married. I cried a lot those first few months, and though I would always tell my husband that I didn’t know why I was so upset, I can tell you now that Read More

Congregational Mourning Shoes by Susanna Baird

We bring them down from high shelves in guest room closets. We carry them up from basement boxes where they rest next to strings of Christmas lights, enamelware pots, rakes, trunks full of mothballs and wool. Unbox, unbin pumps in leather if winter, patent if Easter has passed, heels thicker than strumpet but not too Read More

Bursting by Linette Marie Allen

photo by Grace Coughlan Read More

The Parents by Grace Reed

You see, my parents were always picky about their food. They wouldn’t eat this, they wouldn’t eat that. Very choosy. Which sometimes got them in trouble. That’s why it was particularly peculiar on Thanksgiving Day that they ate the whole meal themselves. My mother does not like turkey, but she ate the thing whole… My Read More

Baltimore, I actually like it! By Natalie Jeffery

The photo above was taken on West North Avenue in Baltimore City—right outside of Mondawmin. I was pursuing a photo series of the artist Iandry, a 2009 MICA graduate whose art decorates the city. He was painting the “Wall of Wisdom,” a mural which consists of six portraits of historical change makers: Frederick Douglass, Matthew Read More

Five Questions for Kyle Dargan by Charlotte Smith

I’ve been a huge fan of Kyle Dargan’s poetry ever since I first read Honest Engine, his fourth collection of poetry, for a school internship. This was my introduction to Dargan, who I now consider one of the most important young voices in poetry in the D.C. area, and maybe anywhere. In addition to writing Read More

Q&A with Andi McIver

The following interview is with Andi McIver, the author of “Ubuntu,” which will appear in our next issue. “Ubuntu” is an amazing nonfiction essay about the life of McIver as she grows up in South Africa, a place still haunted with the remnants of Apartheid, having only just institutionally ended in the early 90s. “Ubuntu” Read More

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