By JENNIFER ACKER
Mostly, Les gossips and writes about girls. One’s “a real peach” and another “darn nice.” Poor Esther has legs like parentheses—she “must have been born with a barrel between her legs.” Then there’s Mildred, who’s darn good-looking but too biting: “Sarcastic is no word. That’s complimenting her.” Les gets a little revenge when he sees her at a dance with “an awful dopey looking hobo.” He has a good time, even though “nearly every girl there was a pot.”
By CLARE BEAMS
The church ladies were having coffee in the living room of the Baker house when Martin Williams delivered his parachute to Lily Baker, his bride. Only some of the church ladies could really have been there, but in retellings they all claimed seats. They allowed one another this. A natural desire, to be part of the story.
By ELIZABETH POLINER
That summer, even before she took up mowing, Suzanne was doubting herself, an uncertainty that set in when her husband began to notice the Mandlebrauns’ oldest daughter, Alison, soon to finish college. Alison, who lived in the only other house on their riverside lane, was home in Middle Haddam for the summer and came by to play tennis on their court with their daughter, Michelle, also soon to finish college. The girls, never close friends to begin with, had drifted further apart during their time away at school. It was surprising, then, to see them suddenly pair up, even if only for tennis.
The forecast was wrong.
The bald guy smiling
but wrong. The blonde
with swinging hair
wrong. Their software,
their reading of currents. Rain,
they said, rain for days.
Stare…
—Walker Evans’ advice to young artists
So here’s a board-and-batten house—
a wall of planks with ragged ends
behind the windows’ splitting sills—
By MAX FREEMAN
Virgil got his tattoo in Megara
Around the time he knew that his great poem
Must be destroyed. A reckless decision.
By RICO GATSON
Introduction by David E. Little
What was required was a new story, a new history told through the lens of our struggle.
—Ta-Nehisi Coates
They say there’s nothing harder than hitting a fastball. In America, clichés on the difficulty of sports abound. But how to describe the challenges of art?
The luxe door had cost them everything. Oak, with wooden lace. It gave the impression there was more behind it than:
By SUSAN STRAIGHT
When my youngest daughter began her freshman year of high school, I said casually to her, “Do you ever see Christian?”
She gave me an incredulous and dismissive look. She replied, “Why would I see him? He doesn’t go here. He’s probably not in school at all. He probably fried his brain dying his hair all those colors.”
And then she was done. She talked about something else. But I kept picturing him. Forever to me he will be the boy who called my child a nigger and spat on her when she was ten.
With ANGELA PALM
Your name: Angela Palm
Current city or town: Burlington, Vermont
How long have you lived here: Five years
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Celebrating 15 Years