Peter Makuck: Triggers
That look on his face. After all these years, I’d love to punch him again.
Meg Pokrass: Moments with Crochet Hooks
Back then she and her mother waited for the phone to ring, for money to plump itself up and walk through their door. Moments passed with yarn and crochet hooks.
Mel Packer: Angie’s Place
Where back in the corner, there’s always some guy in a Pirates ballcap with skin like an old leather shoe who’s nursing the cheapest beer on tap….
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: When I Shut the Door
The news arrived by e-mail — a scribble of a long, single sentence, broken up, like little chunks of wood, the way a year is broken up into months and weeks, days, hours.
Dan Turello: Craft your own renaissance with tips from Boccaccio’s Decameron
A few years ago, on a crisp winter afternoon, I found a beautiful bound translation of The Decameron at the Black Swan bookstore in Staunton, Virginia….I bought it immediately and took it back to a friend’s cabin where a group of us had gathered for the weekend.
Meg Pokrass & Jeff Friedman: Wig
The wig arrived in a pretty pink box. I’d ordered it online from a wig shop. Silky, blonde and long, it felt as if I were entertaining a movie star in my hallway. Grace Kelly in a box on my couch. So nice to meet you, I said, slipping it on.
Peter Makuck: Recycled (corrected version)
His girlfriend sat in the car. The other cop was at the passenger door, probably shouting for her to exit the vehicle with your hands above your head where I can see them. I watch too many “Law and Order” reruns.
James Joyce: Thus the Unfacts
Someday duly, oneday truly, twosday newly, till whensday.
Video: Thirsty Kevin’s Big Date
Kevin goes on his first date in 20 years, but makes one disastrous mistake.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Our Casualties
We were living at the Mount Clinton Internally Displaced Refugee camp outside of Roseville the day his death news came in. It struck something throughout the camp of thousands, like an axe cutting through hard wood…
Tony Magistrale: When Viruses Collide: Covid-19 Meets Stephen King’s The Stand
Published in 1978, The Stand, a narrative that centers on a pandemic virus that decimates 99% of the world’s population, has perhaps hit a bit too close to home.
Mike Schneider: Against Walls | John le Carré (1931-2020)
Among reasons we’ll remember le Carré, not least is his 1963 breakthrough novel, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold. Set in Cold War Berlin, it’s a classic story of love and espionage centered on the Berlin Wall, both as physical reality and symbol of separation between people — a wall that resonates with 21st-century politics.
Video: After Anyuta
In this modern reimagining of Anton Chekhov’s short story “Anyuta” (1886), a young woman spends the day posing as a life model for both a medical student and a neighboring artist.
Vox Populi 