Pecos Bill
By Short Story Issue 89
August 31, 2005 WHEN SHE CAME TO, Celeste’s head was under the TV stand. The Russian from last night, the good stuff, was nearby, on his side, and empty. No more Mister $3.99, the red, or Mister Andre $4.92, the champagne, either. She pulled herself up onto her stuffed chair and peered through the windows…
Read MoreA Trip to Welty’s South of South
By Essay Issue 71
OUTSIDE A FINE New Orleans restaurant in the early fifties, a married man asks an unattached woman, “Have you ever driven south of here?” and she says, “South of here, I didn’t know there was any south of here. Does it just go on and on?” Then, without agreeing upon their intentions, the two take off—for…
Read MoreStupid Praise
By Poetry Issue 70
New Orleans, August 29, 2009 One last Katrina poem, the final praise for what I hated. I quit. No more a guard dog of damaged goods chained in the yard, drinking from tadpole puddles, dragging my doom and gloom down happy streets. I swear. No more damaged goods, watchdog groups, or Katrina’s white flags on…
Read MoreSecond Line and the Art of Witness: Steve Prince’s Katrina Suite
By Essay Issue 78
Going through the experience of Hurricane Katrina taught me to submit to and praise God. The message I got is that we are hopeless, but we still thanked God in the midst of it. Some people can’t fathom how to sing and praise him in the midst of Katrina. That is where I pulled all…
Read MoreInsider/Outsider/In: The Art of Jennifer Anne Moses
By Essay Issue 79
THE SUNDAY TRAVEL SECTION of the New York Times would seem, on the face of it, an unexpected venue for an artistic confession, but for the multifaceted Jennifer Anne Moses—fiction writer, spiritual memoirist, and painter, as well as a self-confessed “liberal East Coast Jew”—it was an acutely appropriate venue, effectively the still point of…
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