Brian Costello
[Originally printed on the back page “Local Voices” op-ed column of the Lake Lavender Coupon Clipper Monthly, May 1986. Reprinted with kind permission of the author of the piece, Peggy Saunderson.]
It seems that every time you open up the newspaper or turn on the news, teenagers are getting into some kind of trouble. Well, instead of focusing on the negative like everybody else, I’d like to tell you about three local teenagers who are making a positive difference. While others (myself included!) complain about Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, these three decided to do something about it. Read more »
Michelle Pretorius
When she thought about it (and she thought about it often), Daisy was amazed that Martin was interested in her. Sure, she was a great cook; she grew her own vegetables on the farm, and insisted on the best cuts of meat at the local butcher shop, shunned store bought pie-crusts and preserved her own fruit. She had made quite a success of the small village eatery where the local farmers had lunch with their families on Sundays after church and occasionally celebrated this or that and where teenagers took their first serious dates on Saturday nights, hoping for some necking and maybe more later; but when it came down to it, one had to admit, Daisy was rather homely looking. Read more »
Cyn Vargas
The tree house burnt down in 1983. From the day it was built by Henry Cornwell’s dad back when we were seven to the day it went up in flames almost five years later, Henry and I spent many afternoons there.
After school, sometimes we’d trade moon pies for trail mix – Henry loved trail mix – and then we’d draw on the wooden boards inside with chalk. Tic-tac-toe, hangman, or just some silly sketches – mine were all stick men or stick women or stick dogs – but that Henry did have talent. His drawings looked like drawings. Read more »
A World of His Own
The day drives on as a sullen dream,
with waves that neither break nor live
A man wanders on in search of daybreak on the silent seas.
And with ears eyes mind and soul he draws a landscape of his own. Read more »
Sheree L. Greer
Valentine’s Day, 2009. It’s Saturday night, and since my relationship fell apart six months prior, I’m alone. I sit at my desk in my home office. It’s really just a small space something like a walk-in closet, but since it has a window, it seemed only right to upgrade it. There’s just enough room for my card-table desk, folding chair, and waste basket.
A few months ago, when I was happier, I put up shelves. Having never gotten around to using them, my books still fill the stolen milk crates along the wall of my bedroom. Read more »
Megan Stielstra
It was twenty below, one of those horrible Chicago winter nights with the snow advisory, the blizzard advisory, three layers of gortex and still your fingers are ice in your mittens and every breath freezes your insides. If you’re smart, you stay home, wrapped under afghans with hot chocolate and thermal socks—but me? Read more »
The Hypertext Interview With Geoff Hyatt
HT: What’s your idea of a good Valentine’s Day?
GH: I don’t think you can print that.
HT: Are you a romantic? Not in the 18th century European sense. More like a modern-day romantic? Read more »
Does love really know no bounds? Like, really really? Like, even between Steve and C. James Bye? Find out. Watch their music video…
Kristin Bair O’Keeffe
Dinner, on an evening during Initsa Jubilee’s fourth year, began no differently from any other, except that Father Jubilee glared at his daughter over the thick, black frame of his glasses a chew or two longer than usual, and, when she blew bubbles through a straw in her glass of milk, he cleared his throat with a rumble so great that the delicate wine goblets in the next-door neighbor’s china closet rattled and shook, when normally, he would have simply reached across the yellow table, gripped the glass in his mammoth hand, and flung it against the wall. Read more »
Daniel Prazer
The night of our third date, Michelle and I drove to an all-night pharmacy to go Dutch on a morning-after pill. Her old K-car hadn’t warmed up yet. She wore her winter coat over her scrubs, the ones with the teddy bear print, and we sat silently for a few minutes in the drive-through lane while her St. Christopher figurine rattled itself loose from the dash. Read more »
Marcia Brenner
It was September, that saddest month, and his favorite time of year, and it was a Sunday, and we had the best breakup ever that wasn’t filmed. Get out the popcorn and kleenex and picture it now: We stand outside his small white house next to my green Ford two-door, parked in the driveway (which in itself says something, because to be parked in Read more »
Chelsea Laine Wells
You will think of it again and again irresistibly, too often, the arc of Cain’s fall, his arms flung wide and his sick body like a bird skeleton picked clean of feathers and meat and flattened in the sun, his head swept back like a doll’s head loosely moored, the balls of his arched feet rolling against the edge of the third story eave until he was horizontal and cutting down through still summer air past his bedroom, past the window seat where you squirmed against him, Read more »
Cyn Vargas
It wasn’t that Sebastian was ashamed of his wife, Grace, who was seven months pregnant with twins. It was just that before the pregnancy, her body used to fit into tight jeans, and even tighter sweaters, curves his tongue and his fingers traced like riding a roller coaster, up and down, and loops even. Now, it felt more like running a tongue over the Grand Canyon. Sebastian wasn’t ashamed of Grace. He just no longer wanted to have sex with her. Read more »
A LOVE STORY SET IN A CREEPY NIGHTMARE FOREST
I hope you don’t
get eaten by that
horrible
horrible deer thing
behind you. Read more »
Mary Beth Hoerner
Ron Paul to Carol Paul
Happy Valentine’s Day, Pumpkin!
The First Amendment protects my right to talk crazy, so here I go.
You know I have delivered more than 4,000 babies, which means I’ve been privy to well over 4,000 vjj’s, but yours still does it for me, Grandma. You may not be the hot, Barbie/Stepford Wife the other dolts have, you may wear floral housecoats to black-tie events, but no one—and I mean no one—rocks a “Ron Paul Revolution” hoodie the way you do. Read more »
Jessie Ann Morrison
I began taking piano lessons when I was six years old. My teacher, Ms. Lombardo, was a large, lumbering Italian woman who favored flesh colored stretch pants, and whenever she leaned over to turn the page of my sheet music, she exuded that spicy scent that clings to your sweater when you go out for fondue. Read more »
Jotham Burrello
For once my math was spot-on. Which wasn’t so much of a surprise given I was just quoting back the cost of 330-square feet of ship-lap boards to the heir apparent of Sigfrigson Wood Products, henceforth referred to as son-woodsman, a figure father-woodsman had quoted me on the phone. My nimble arithmetic to answer the question, what do you think 330 square feet of ship-lap runs? momentarily impressed son-woodsman. Perhaps he wasn’t dealing with such a rube. Read more »
Viki Gonia
I’m somewhat recently divorced. People keep bugging me to start dating. It’s annoying. Please stop telling me to start dating. The conversation usually goes like this:
“Are you dating anyone?” says well-meaning friend.
“No,” I say, steeling myself for the inevitable. Read more »
Melanie Datz
You are curiously aware of your stomach, the way when you were in college, a hit of acid made you curiously aware of your skin. At a gallery party, you fought shyness with too-much Chablis on an empty stomach, and a few days later, your stomach foams. Read more »
Greg Baldino
The walk from the bus stop to Natalie and Dennis’ house was longer than Gerard had thought. The October wind sliced at his bare hands as they wrapped around a brown paper bag.
He wished he’d brought gloves. He wished he’d brought his backpack. He wished he knew what the hell he thought he was doing. Read more »
Hear Elizabeth Yokas’ Summersong here.
With the Fishermen
This morning I strolled to the harbour
To watch the fishermen paint their boats,
Or mend their nets with a spinster’s patience,
Mesmerized by their unravelling. Read more »
Dan Shapiro
I’m an average guy. I live in the suburbs. I’m lucky enough to have a well-paying job as a computer programmer. I have a loving wife. I have two kids that I love very much, but sometimes they drive me up the wall. I’m a normal guy by all accounts. Oh, but there is one unusual thing about me. I can remember what it was like in the womb. Read more »
Ira Brooker
“I like your stretch marks,” she says, crisscrossing the space between my shoulder blades with a chilly fingertip. The marks have been there since I was 14 and my pubescent body tried its damnedest to outgrow its own skin. She places her palm flat against my back. “I like that I can see them and you can’t,” she says. “It’s like I know a secret you keep from yourself.” Read more »
