From the Lines of Life: Guy Chase and the Art of the (Extra)Ordinary
By Essay Issue 72
Although preparation for this article began in 2008, by the time it was completed Guy Chase had begun to lose his fight with cancer. He approved a near-final draft a few months before slipping away in his sleep on August 18, 2011, at the age of fifty-six. I am for an art that grows…
Read MoreAdvent
By Poetry Issue 72
On an island in the disputed region of the Yellow Sea, blooms of smoke from the shelling of the garrison weave into one bloom, one force of nature so thick, they say, you cannot see your hands. The planet, we know, tilts on its axis like a man contemplating a problem, spun toward the horizon…
Read MoreMonotheism
By Poetry Issue 72
As he raises my bookshelf, empty now, and therefore heavy with what I do not know, my friend the carpenter speaks so kindly of all the dark acolytes of one god who walk the streets of ground zero in fear, beneath the shadows and mistrust that pour down the highest places like waterfalls of dust.…
Read MoreGlorybound
By Short Story Issue 72
The following excerpts are from the novel Glorybound, forthcoming from WordFarm Press in 2012. Aimee THE LEMLEY SISTERS had decided they would drive to the prison on the first Monday in August, but on that morning, Aimee woke with bad pain. It was still dark, not yet five. She peeled off her blanket and…
Read MoreMugg, Hitch, and Me
By Essay Issue 72
WHEN I WAS GROWING UP, I wanted to be Christopher Hitchens. In a manner of speaking. I didn’t, in fact, learn who he was until I was in my thirties, but I can see in retrospect that Hitchens was the epitome of everything I hoped to be as a writer. My passions were political, philosophical,…
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