A version of this piece first appeared on Trampset In April, the reality of the pandemic fades into the background as my family deals with our own internal crisis. The house is in Kemsing, a southern English village in the Kent countryside. It is nestled on the slopes of the North Downs, a range of…
Category: non-fiction
Some observations concerning the desirability of a new paradigm for medicine
We physicians have never had a clearly defined mission. That mattered less when expectations were lower and we could do less. Now though, the reigning paradigm is grounded in basic science, excessively confident, inpatient-centric, and broadly focused on treatment of symptoms and signs, on diagnosis and therapy. The development of a new medical paradigm seems…
In Time I Find Strength, in Time I Get Caught in the Memories of Food – Hamnah Khan
In Time I Find Strength, in Time I Get Caught in the Memories of Food There had been a time when I had been told that if I had to go through the most important events in my life I would remember only a mere hour of them, all of them painfully squished against each…
Failing to Eat a Local Delicacy – Michael O’Mahony
Lorighittas are a type of pasta made in one small village, Morgongiori, on a side of a mountain on the east of Sardinia. Only the women of this village, and only some of them, know how to make lorighittas. A lorighitta is effectively a woven pasta made from a dough of semolina and water. Each…
COMFORT FOODS // Flour and Oil — Jacey de la Torre
Those are some peoples’ stories, some peoples’ histories, but they aren’t ours.
Disposable – Walker Thomas
“You can call me Mr. S,” my ninth-grade biology teacher told the class on our first day, “for the sssss a snake makes.” Eyes sunken behind wirerimmed glasses, he had a wide mouth with no lips that I recall, and long, stubble-blue cheeks like leather stretched tight to the bone. While he lectured, a red…
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,…
Spiders in the Drain, and Other American Horrors – Brett Bezio
The wolf spider gestured to me from across the tub, unfurling four legs from behind the metal cover obscuring overflow drain to greet me, naked and alone in a foot of bath water. This memory stands in isolation, as remote memories of a young child often are. The memory itself creeps from a drain, simply…
Walking, Encumbered: Dispatches – Nicola Sayers
For the longest time, I walked alone. I walked to think. I walked to see. I walked to be seen. I see them, now. They wear pretty summer dresses, or jeans. In winter, brightly coloured scarves. Their light backpacks sit squarely on both shoulders; inside each, I imagine, is a book, a notepad and a…
Diamonds or Snow – T.S.J. Harling
Image by Alex Avalos, via Unsplash This is the place you go to bury or burn the person you love. – You are in a cinema with friends, or a boyfriend, or your family. No-one is ill, no-one is cross, and you have enough money to waste on a cinema ticket and popcorn and fizzy…
An Ode to Cross-Dressing – Clara Schwarz
I tightly pull back my hair into a slick, low bun, parted far on the right side of my skull. With a several pumps of hairspray, I even out the edges and create a stiff look. I squeeze the top button through its hole and stand up straight as I clip the bow into its…
Pero’s Promise – Tamara Lazaroff
At the village bus stand, with my packed bags, I’m crying my eyes out as I kiss the faces of the row of relatives—Uncle Mitko, Beti, Verka, Tanja, Mirka, even Baba Slobodanka who Branko has carried on his back. Others, too. They’ve all come to say goodbye before I go back home to Australia. And…
Porridge 