The Road Atlas [essay] by Daniel Torday

1. Baltimore, MD  >> Sun Valley, ID, Summer, 1998 Mid-June. Pick up Then-Girlfriend/Now-Wife from airport, where T-GF/N-W returning from year in Dakar. Plan: in Grandpa’s old 1993 Nissan Maxima, pick up two Old Friends in Baltimore, drive to Tuscaloosa to pick up college friend in Tuscaloosa, drive through Ozarks, drive to Vail, drive through Independence …

Voices [essay] by Raima Evan

It was 1982, and I was three years out of college, working as a temporary secretary while doing voice-overs in New York. Feeling adrift and tired of the uncertainty of the voice-over world, I applied for a part-time job transcribing tapes for a psychiatrist who was studying post-traumatic stress disorder. Arriving for my interview, I …

A Memoir [essay] by Gene Berson

A pattern of dingy beige brown and green linoleum, cold heater grate screening a draft from dense black rectangles, which lead to “under the house”; my father, high above me, the ceiling light reflected in his glasses, arguing defensively with my mother who was exclaiming: “Rats! Rats! You moved me to a house with rats!?” …

The Elephant Girl [essay] by Deborah Lott

From the first day of kindergarten on, LeeAnn and I watched each other. As I sat in my chair by the window, howling and sobbing for my mother, LeeAnn could not take her eyes off me. The other children, “big boys and girls” who didn’t need their mothers, stared at me with contempt for so …

Refugee Lesson [essay] by Terese Svoboda

I faced nine surly teenagers: two Sudanese Nuer and a Nubian, two Laotians, two Cubans, and a Bosnian. I didn’t forget the Mexican boy at the table’s end, but Hispanics are so much a part of Nebraska’s farming life, he didn’t register as a refugee. The principal had rounded up a selection of immigrants who …

A Way with Cows [essay] by Duff Brenna

For three days snow has gathered in a wide band across northern Wisconsin, piling four feet high in some places. My farm is ten miles south of Lake Superior. This area often gets what is called “lake effect snows.” Which means two to three feet more than what Hayward, Spooner or Rice Lake get. The …

On Beverly’s Hill [essay] by Therése Halscheid

January 12th: Today I traveled four hours to housesit for a little-known place called “Beverly’s Hill.” This unusual clapboard home is perched on a ridge, with the frozen Delaware River below. To one side is a waterfall that is not frozen. It flows down over tiered rocks, alongside florafox.com/. The sound of it is …

Grace [essay] by Dustin Beall Smith

If your parachute doesn’t open, you hit the ground at 125 miles-per-hour. This means going from a vertical speed of 174 feet-per-second to a dead stop, instantly. The resulting energy (mass times acceleration) splinters bone and liquefies cartilage, and usually shoots your innards, if not through a ruptured abdominal wall, then directly out your anus. …

Eduard, Sasha, and I Go to the Black Sea [essay] by Sharon Stephenson

During the coffee break I tell Eduard that one of the bigwigs from his lab creeps me out. To him this is no surprise. He asks if I have gone swimming in the Black Sea. No. Not yet. I plan to go this afternoon, when most of the conference participants are on an excursion to …

The Word Dog [essay] by Steve Schutzman

I wanted to forget the word dog. I started by saying dog outloud again and again, as if it might tear through like a cloth, weak from being remembered too often. I said the word dog until it became meaningless, pure nonsense, a mere sound, but this wasn’t forgetting. It was more like kissing without …

Gingko Song (essay) by Rebecca McClanahan

A one-legged man could make a killing on this street, a left-footed man, anyway, who wears a standard size. He could pluck that suede loafer, the two-tone saddle or dress cordovan right off the sidewalk display here on Tenth Avenue. Something for everyone, in New York City. This young man, for instance, stumbling toward me, …

The Air Sculpture (essay) by Thomas E. Kennedy

The structure resembles a cheap imitation of a gaudy Disneyland castle—a gray, mottled, plastic blow-up adolescent dream, and I am standing in its vestibule, alongside Nora, the current fire of my loins, who has accompanied me on the train from Copenhagen to Århus, which is the second largest city in Denmark—in northern Jutland, the peninsula …

What Did I Have (essay) by Lynn Kanter

On a recent weekend morning, as I was on my hands and knees scrubbing the bathtub, I felt an unexpected happiness rise up. I was blasting music, and against the yellow tile walls reverberated the bold voice of Eydie Gormé belting “What Did I Have that I Don’t Have.” I had not heard that song …

Phony Boys and a Moment of Truth (essay) by Adriana Paramo

I joined the communist party in my early teens. At thirteen, I was a hard-core communist and as any respected leftwing radical would, I carried around three books: The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital and my all time favorite, Chairman Mao-Tse-Tung’s The Little Red Book, which I never read but was the prettiest shiny little red …

Perspectives on Space Exploration (essay) by Cory Johnston

It was a stack of old newspapers, but I didn’t read newspapers. They seemed archaic, unnecessary, as useful to me as the box of obsolete electronics with which they shared the back corner of my closet. Of course, it wasn’t my closet anymore. “I knew that you would forget something.” Her voice came from the …

Crash (essay) by Suzanne Farrell Smith

The Catholic boys’ school in New York where I work as a substitute teacher has its own holiday traditions. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, which commemorates the conception of Mary, free from sin, is the only day Diet Coke is served at lunch. I fail to see the connection, though Diet Coke is nearly …

My Life as a Cactus (essay) by Allie Marini Batts

I grow thornier with each touch. Keep your distance. I am all spines and spurs. Tipped in poison, like Egyptian arrowheads; I am a night bloomer, the moths and bats my friends. They feed me and take care not to light on my boughs. The moon, too, my friend, pale and blue at an arm’s …

Flight (essay) by Joel Peckham

I have read how Tibetan monks, having carried the dead to the green valleys on a mountainside will strip a body of flesh, cut skin and muscle to fragments; then praying, take hammer to bone, crushing the last bits to powder. In the evening, these are left on the valley floor, offerings for gathering vultures.  …

The Ride of My Life (essay) by Christin Rice

Coffee is necessary. It’s necessary every day, but particularly today. It’s Sunday morning and I’m signed up for a writing workshop. My pen and paper are packed and ready to go, but my brain isn’t. Or maybe it’s my courage that hasn’t woken up yet. It’d be so much easier to stay home and struggle …