We use cookies to improve our services and remember your choices for future visits. For more information see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Independent, Reader-Supported Publishing
Browse Topics
Siblings
Fiction
Tumbleweed
A thousand stars, a billion. Thundering silence. It’s Tom who reaches over. He puts his hand on my chest and says, “I wish we had more grass,” and leaves it there. Till I curl up beside him.
December 1991Readers Write
Homecoming
A tiny duckling, a bullethole in the ceiling, chocolate chip cookies and bomb craters
November 1991Fiction
He Wears Black
I am a German man. That is clear. But I am born in the year 1955. Ten years after the war is over and so, I am having nothing to do with that war. I am part of the new people in Germany.
November 1990Fiction
In The War-Torn Heart Of The House
Bucky, it’s Tuesday, May 9. I’m in the records vault using the old IBM to hammer this one out to you, my dictaphone account of how it went the last night at our house and about my return to Trent (still minimum security).
September 1990Fiction
Darrell
I liked my truck. I liked to put all my blocks in the back and cart them from room to room. But I loved Merry’s doll.
September 1990Readers Write
Dancing
Miss Valentine’s School of Social Dance, jitterbugging in Calcutta, the “big girl’s ward” in the crippled children’s hospital
November 1989Fiction
Caleb’s Journal
I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?
August 1989Fiction
Leaving The Dead
My mother wanted to flush our pet goldfish down the toilet. My brother and I thought we at least ought to look after its death since we hadn’t done much for its short life.
June 1989Fiction
The Baby Machine
The next day was Sunday, and after church Peggy was born time after time. “Being born” meant sliding down the trough into the pillow. Magda knew that babies were born with diapers on, so that was how Peggy was dressed.
March 1989Fiction
Kudzu Dreams
I was a child with a peculiar and passionate hunger for the peppermint in toothpicks when I went on a lion hunt with Opal Lavender, who was my favorite person and one of my own people.
September 1988
Subscribe & SaveSAVE 52%
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today