Prose and Poetry at the University of Chicago
When arthritis made her wince, she muttered the town name as metonym for a cold, crowded prison floor— a journey, world war, and privations away from the woman I knew: wizened in a faded dress at her dining table in L.A., her magnifying glass big as a saucer quivering to parse the newspaper for a …
Continue reading "Poetry: “Velikiye Luki” by Michael Sandler"
We’re parked in the middle of a snow-packed lane where treetops threaten telephone lines. Branches on both sides of the truck are knuckle-twisted and braided in ice. The headlights cushion my father’s draped body, but somewhere down the dark road, light, trees, and wire disappear. It’s midnight and Dad is taking pictures. He’s buried under …
Continue reading "FICTION: “Night Creatures” by Patricia Meek"
I watch a raccoon wobble like a drunk from a bar in daylight, so maybe he’s rabid or she is old and confused too many seasons, litters, scavenges cloudy eyes, achey paws a turkey vulture circles and leaves returns with a flock the raccoon flattens against the grass animal control joins me in the yard …
I hear footsteps on the stair but they’re not you, they’re indefinably lighter and they’re not coming here, they’re going somewhere else. On the other hand they do sound like you just enough to make me raise my head and listen awhile and smile. Iris Litt's third book of poems, Snowbird, was published by Finishing …
Continue reading "Poetry: “After You Moved Out of the Upstairs Apartment” by Iris Litt"
we stood beside a lake unmoving, flat stones in small palms, two boys with frozen tongues. the first stone flew and didn't skip so much as sink. we watched, a spell unbroken. The second stone followed, then a third, a fourth, and soon you and I made each stone keep its beat, drumsticks on glassy …
Continue reading "Poetry: “Skipping Stones” by Blake London"
August mud clings to our ankles like the skies just opened for a second. Didn’t plan on raining but a little slipped out so we can stop getting cuts on dry weeds and smelling cinnamon starch air dried like fourth grade. We are so tired of being in this month. It feels like bike …
the party started with guns in their mouths and a nice baby’s breath arrangement that seemed to play off her dress the vows said heard by those with knives in their eyes and a one way ticket when the part came to kiss the bride the Mothership arrived with a light they’d never known or …
After he was blown up, after he lost both legs below the knee, after he made it through three surgeries that saved his life, Jimmy Cachetti rotated out of Landstuhl and back to the states, where he convalesced near home, at the V.A. in Riviera Beach, Florida—a mammoth facility painted the color of an oxidized …
It had just started to rain when I ran into Theo’s parents on the street outside the museum. I was trying to hail a taxi. I was happy to see them and they seemed happy to see me. I was nervous that Theo’s mother Sally would scratch my face or that his father Reg would …
UNCLE RUDI —after Gerhard Richter, 1965 Based on a family snap the artist’s uncle stands a warrior posed in grand regalia, facing the camera head on, two columns of buttons front his winter coat with smeared eagles and almost invisible lightning bolts on the collar and epaulets, a swastika perched on his cap. Smiling like …
