Fiction
An Hourglass Full of Snowflakes
It’s rare for a man to have true peace of mind. Or maybe that’s too negative. Maybe a man has peace of mind the majority of his life, but only notices it once it’s gone, when turmoil is magnified, during times of stress when one looks back enviously on calmer waters. These were the thoughts [...]
Fiction
When the Leaf Bug Bites I’ll Be Looking Out the Window at You Smoking in the Rain
On the hotel room balcony, Luke stood smoking cigarette after cigarette as I put the kids to bed. Their excitement at being in a hotel, at sharing a room with us, had them popping up like the moles in that arcade game where you hit ‘em with a mallet. I can’t deal with this, he [...]
Fiction
We met in a shadowed hallway, both of us discarded on a wooden bench outside of Doctor Langdon’s office, white knuckles clasped on our laps, skirts bunched about our cold feet. As the doctor had asked to speak first with my parents, I’d taken the seat next to a woman who immediately turned to me. [...]
Poetry
When the City Fell From the Sky
I was standing in the town square staring up at trees spiraling down on their bulky heads and landing with their roots thrust up like errant toes or fingers from a grave. I heard the houses bellow as they gave up, as their shoulders sagged and snagged star by star like the back of a [...]
Poetry
1. greasepaint buffalo twirling dishes gravity creep children pull turtleneck wonder through the mad herd 2. the neighbor’s dog is barking invisibly it’s about to rain the trees are dropping their knots you remember yourself 3. kitchen sink full of cotton candy a lampshade sky the measured mind all the clown feet Dan Elman’s work [...]
Poetry
When The Harpsichord of Watercolors
I hung them out of the location, but was worried about rain. Awareness on canvas, Monday in the South Philly kill zone. I’ll be on your arm, but these are not the only words we have in common. As easy as it is to get a slice of pizza, the sooner you know that the [...]
Poetry
Because I never learned a damn thing in school, since D.A.R.E. came long after truth. Because maps don’t work here, and there is oil, but “The Rainbow isn’t Enuf.” Because ain’t no nigga playing Spider-Man Or James Bond. Because it’s raining right now in Antigua, but North Philly is lovely this time of year. Because [...]
Poetry
Sounds within a house change when the last of the dead are taken; echoes of dust settling air drying, cracking: emptiness has a resonance. That is why we point mutely at paintings, lamps, furniture, small things favored by memory; whisper when we must speak: the brass mortar and pestle, the painting, cows grazing, the cut [...]
Non-Fiction
On the Divine Lorraine and Falling in Love
We lived in the ethereal shadow of the Divine Lorraine only for a year, but it stands out in my head, still as bright as the neon lights dancing underneath its towering signage. An abandoned, graffitied, majestic husk of a hotel, it dominated the skyline where we lived at 15th and Fairmount. In particular, I [...]
Interview
Robin Black, this year’s final judge for the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction, and keynote speaker for Philadelphia Stories’ 2016 Push to Publish conference, seemed to burst, fully formed, upon the national literary scene with the publication of her story collection, If I loved You, I Would Tell You This. The book earned Black rave [...]
Column
My mother bought tickets to a book luncheon the other day. I’d never heard of that, but it’s a place where a lot of women wearing Chico’s mix-and-match outfits spend $60 to eat chicken while listening to an author speak about his or her books. The author in this case was a very nice man [...]
Review
By Emily Bludworth de Barrios (H_NGM_N BKS, 2015)* Emily Bludworth de Barrios’ poem “All Souls’” was selected as an editor’s choice in the 2013 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry In her 2015 full-length poetry collection Splendor, Emily Bludworth de Barrios grapples with morality and virtue as qualities at odds with a contemporary, consumerist lifestyle. She [...]
Review
A Secret of Long Life: Familial Heartache & Happiness in Elegant, Timeless Fashion
Poet Liz Dolan paints the ordinary in passionate hues in A Secret of Long Life, a collection of poems that move across the page with the sweet, haunting ache of memory. From now distant da