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Unlikely Prophets
Last week I was sitting on the bus headed home from work, and couldn’t help but overhear two college-aged girls talking behind me. One said to the other, “I mean, I thought he was normal, but then he looked at the ground and started screaming."She sounded pained, but after only a beat or two both girls broke into nervous giggles. A protective instinct rose up in me, because though I’d missed all other details of this encounter and so wasn’t sure about the relationship between the girl and this man....
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Reading Together
Reading, as a means of entertainment, is gloriously and tragically solitary. Think about it. Watching a television show or a movie or a ball game is often done with others, preferably with snacks. Maybe your friends meet up each week to cheer their favorite contestant on Top Chef. Or you catch the new Indiana Jones movie with your brother—even though you’re skeptical about the inclusion of aliens and outraged by the inclusion of Shia Labeouf, it’s worth it when you’re looking up at that screen together, eyes aglow, hands shiny with popcorn grease. It’s difficult, however, to read a story or essay or even poem with someone else and have it go smoothly....
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Water and Oil
Water: we think of it all the time. This is perhaps especially true of me, born a Baptist, an Aquarius, and a weeper. A Baptist, dipped into the carp-thick Conasauga river. An Aquarius, water bearer. A weeper, sloshing water from the bucket of the soul. Water permeates our lives. We are told to drink eight glasses a day. We cleanse ourselves in it. We are mostly made up of it, lakes posing as people, swimming through each hour. When we are ready to eat, our mouths water. When a woman is ready to give birth, her water breaks....
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Spirits and Spooks
I’m always surprised come mid-September when I pop into the drugstore or supermarket and first see the aisle in black and orange, yellow and purple, of fun-sized Halloween candy and plastic jack-o-lantern buckets. This is because, as a non-driver, I’m normally sweaty from walking or sitting on a crowded bus, and September isn’t cool enough to lend the chill necessary for a goosebump-inducing holiday. When October arrives, however, I’ll take a few minutes to walk through and peruse the offerings: the standard candies like M&Ms and Reese’s peanut butter cups are always there, as are the confections one can only find this time of year, like candy corn, gummy eyeballs, and wax vampire teeth. It’s these latter, more morbid sweets that delight me, because unlike many who were raised in evangelical households, I was brought up to love Halloween....
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The Lost Art of Letter Writing
Letter writing, the kind with real ink and paper, has become something of a cultural anachronism, like rotary phones or washboards. Mention that you plan to spend the afternoon writing a letter, and be prepared to meet the same quick-blinking surprised faces you might receive if, pushing back from a restaurant table, you say, “Excuse me while I powder my nose.” It just doesn’t happen anymore. I think this is a pity, because letter writing has held an important place in my life since I was thirteen. It was then I made my first real best friend; we’ll call her Summer....
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Current Issue
Issue 72
Memoir by Lauren Winner, Poetry by James Harpur, Art by Guy Chase and Adrian Wiszniewski
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