Fiction
Sometimes I feel like someone’s going to shoot me, right between my shoulder blades, when I’m walking alone at night. It’s just me, the sidewalk, and the occasional dog shit most of the time, but other times I get the sense that someone is focusing right in that space on my spine.
Fiction
The child was dead before Irina Putavich plunged her hands into the scalding water and lifted him startled-faced to the air. The baby was limp. As his round nose and the fat cheeks with which he so powerfully suckled rose above the shining scrim of clear water, he did not open his small heart-shaped mouth [...]
Non-Fiction
In 2004 I stopped reading books. I had just stopped smoking. I’d stopped smoking because I’d nearly completed writing a novella when my laptop sputtered and died. The data, despite some effort, was unrecoverable. I grieved like someone dear had died.
Poetry
A chauffeured Jaguar, white, awaits. For now I tend my own modest rose. Poems at the door, early, late, gather. A dream ladder climbs. Ten wishes rise.
Poetry
Beauty was hard for me to find on a spare cot or in the back of a truck, when I had no home. & then I did,
Poetry
The Oldest Daughter Flies to Dublin
Over northern Canada, she may feel most alone, although it is the longest day of the year
Poetry
We moved to Philadelphia from an Indian village & shipped our big old tomcat, Senge.
Poetry
He packed up the years in one suitcase at summer’s bloom left everything undone I stood still & wooden in the empty yard exhausted by the sudden drought
Poetry
When I was younger, I was always leaving my shoes behind, always, though, with a good excuse.
Poetry
Pete was thin, just muscle, dark skin and anger, stuffed inside an ancient Iron Maiden The Number of the Beast t-shirt,
Column
Hello! This gorgeous issue marks the second collaboration between Philadelphia Stories and the Free Library’s annual One Book, One Philadelphia program.