‘When All Looks Bleak, Keep Going, for What Else Is There?’ – The Generation of Dogged Persistence The setting: my kitchen in the early evening, lights filtering through the window and the door open onto the hallway. The atmosphere: cheerful but low-key, with a smidgen of excitement at the prospect of letting (reasonably) loose. The…
Category: america
Reading Heat-Moon in Nicaragua – William Fleeson
For a dusty Central American beach town, San Juan del Sur has a ton of history. The former fishing village once offered passage to Forty-Niners on their way from the US east coast to California. Cornelius Vanderbilt grew his fortune by running a waterborne transit line for that gold rush: faster than overland travel, the…
Dances with Rabbits – Walker Thomas
I stood under the alligator juniper that shaded my tent in the oak woods. Effie squatted between my feet. In The Maltese Falcon, Sam Spade called his receptionist Effie. But the Effie at my feet was no lady. I called her F. E. Cottontail in my journals. Cottontails are coprophagous – literally, Fecal Eating. That…
Missing Woman – Katie Hunter
In early October 2020, my partner Greg and I drove at sunrise to Zion National Park in southern Utah. On the way I swigged coffee and snapped photos of sandstone cliffs dip-dyed red by the sun. They dwarfed what I’d imagined while planning our pandemic-adapted vacation – a national park tour via road trip, starting…
I Can’t Recall a Time Without War – Casey Canright
The weeks that followed exploded into a patriotic frenzy. Red, white, and blue dotted every neighborhood – even our own. Old Navy’s Fourth of July T-shirts reemerged for the last few weeks of September. Dad brought home a flag – taller than me – which I demanded be hung by the front door, just like…
PHOTOGRAPHY: Jessica Swank
Through photography and sculpture, I question how the manipulation of behaviour and patterns dehumanises society.
COMFORT FOODS // Flour and Oil — Jacey de la Torre
Those are some peoples’ stories, some peoples’ histories, but they aren’t ours.
Ezra Pound: Prototypical Beat? – Michael Washburn
We today tend to remember Ezra Pound (1885-1972) for the immense density and erudition of his work. Pound’s many preoccupations included Confucius, medieval China, Bertrand de Born, the Provençal period, ancient Egypt, the beauty of the Farsi tongue, and his fellow early twentieth-century modernists. Of course, we also remember many unpleasant things about the man,…
ONE POEM – Sarah Degner Riveros
Mama hugs
her son. Can we get
horchata? No. Not today.
It’s Tuesday. Treinta tacos?
De asada? Para llevar.
The wait’s worth it.
COMFORT FOODS // Cutlets – V.M. Braganza
Cutlets (also called potato chops), much like my family and their language, resist any attempt at tidy or singular classification.
ONE POEM – Keli Foster
I swam in the Gulf of Thailand with you.
I held you, small as a kumquat, in my own dark, small sea.
COMFORT FOODS // A History of Goulash – Maryana Lucia Vestic
My earliest memories of goulash are full of warm, satisfying sensations—soft, chewy egg noodles draped in thick brown gravy and big chunks of beef adorned with a few key ingredients like green pepper, onion, and paprika.
Porridge 