A poem by alum Leslie Contreras Schwartz (poetry, ’11) appears in Tap Lit Mag:
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A short story by alum Karen Tucker (fiction, ’10) appears at The American Literary Review:
He appeared among us one cool October, long before I grew used to strange men. No one saw him enter. Somehow he managed to slip through the door with enough grace or cunning that the old horse bell looped to its handle never even had a chance to ring. He took the stool next to the cash register and fixed his gaze on our mother. He said he wanted a cheese sandwich and an unsweetened iced tea.
For several hard moments, we watched him. The hair that snaked down his neck and curled around a torn-up collar. The bones that poked out of his cheeks like blades. At last our mother tightened her apron. “Sorry mister, but this is a place of business. We don’t just go giving handouts.”
“My dear Beverly.” The man rolled her name around in his mouth as if savoring a rare pleasure. “I’m afraid you’ve made a terrible mistake.”
With a cryptic smile, he reached in his pocket and unfisted a riot of coins onto the counter where it came to rest in a small, lifeless mound.
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A short story by by alum Laurie Saurborn (poetry, ’08) is featured in The American Literary Review:
Less than halfway through the eulogy, Anna’s head started spinning. Closing one eye to steady her stomach and regain equilibrium, she focused on her father’s oak casket as an unwavering horizon. Immediately after the service she and Rebecca Jean walked out of the church. As they cut through the tall, wet grass, their high heels sank into the mud. Back inside the rental car, they drank more wine from blue plastic cups and watched the rain trail down the windows, one drop following the next as if by instinct. Her sister broke the silence. “I think the only thing you can do,” she said, “is to make an imaginary baby of your sadness.” Anna reclined her seat and let her eyes shut for a moment. Her damp blouse clung to her skin, raising gooseflesh along her pale arms. She nodded. “But then what?” Rebecca Jean drained her cup. “Then,” she said, “you put all your grief into the baby, rock it in your arms, and throw the damn thing over a fence.” That was as far as they got about the baby. A tap at the passenger side window and their mother’s face appeared, worried behind the rain.
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Three poems by alum Lia Greenwell (poetry, ’13) are featured in The American Literary Review:
Bell
As a girl I was a bell
unstruck,
a perfect vessel
for sound.
Beauty came for me–
opened my hips
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A short story by alum Kim Frank (fiction, ’11) is featured in The American Literary Review:
The idea rose ten stories into the air. Open gondolas shaped like birdcages painted royal blue, canary yellow, purple, and green. Striped canopy roofs. Lit up spokes stretching every direction and all of it changing colors. “A Ferris wheel,” said Jimmy out loud to no one, “is exactly what we need.” He secured the replaced sections of rusted track behind the dragon’s head and climbed back into the train at the top of the roller coaster. The ocean was rough, typical for November. White caps chopped clear out to the horizon line, and high tide rushed up underneath the pier. He surveyed the park: torn leather Scrambler seats, Flying Swings clanked and tangled, an empty cement square where the Orbit once stood, and the faded blue ticket booth where a young Rosalind, with her blond ponytail and sweet sun freckles, had studied for a college entrance exam she’d never take. They’d been in this together, a family business. Third generation. Only Ros was gone, having just left him after twenty years. He rode the coaster to the bottom. Why not a giant Ferris wheel? Biggest on the Jersey Shore. He pulled out his phone to tell her, still doing even that after two months.
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Alum Joan Frank‘s (fiction, ’96) short story “Biting the Moon” has been published in Ploughshares‘ latest Omnibus collection (purchase a copy here). Following is an excerpt:
A long space of silence came.
Months and months of silence, during which I pretty much gave up on Felix. I assumed the only thing you can assume from silence: the clearest message there can be. And during that silence, also, a series of events, pure happenstance, began to change things. I met, quite by accident, the man I’d later marry. We traveled to France and Italy, and later I moved in with him.
(After that, my books began to appear. About every two or three years. No fame or fortune, but good reviews. I never learned whether Felix knew.)
The Second Washington DC Area Gathering of Warren Wilson MFA Alumni
DATE/TIME: Sunday, November 6, 2016, at 3 pm
LOCATION: Home of Susan Okie; 7941 Deepwell Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817
READERS: Jayne Benjulian (poetry), Barbara Klein Moss (fiction), Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli (poetry), and Cynthia Phoel (fiction)
This event will be a fundraiser for Friends of Writers (FOW) scholarships. Suggested donation is $20, but all are welcome regardless of donations.
RSVP to [email protected] by Oct. 28, 2016, if you plan to attend.
Another DC-area get-together will take place April 2017. Please let Annie Kim (at email address above) know if you are interested in reading then and if you’d like to help organize future events.
Two poems by alum Jennifer Givhan (poetry, ’15) appear at Queen Mob’s Tea House:
Quinceañera
My body he burned ironing the waxpaper
of my breasts glue-gunning me papier-mâché
to the smell of arts & crafts in the recreation room
(every room after the recovery room)
like the cumbias of my girlhood dancefloors
flailing like Sunday Mass Nothing tasted so good
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A poem and corresponding essay by alum Victoria Chang (poetry, ’05) appear in Poetry Magazine:
Barbie Chang’s tears are the lights of
the city that go off on
off on the men walking around the city
move but Barbie Chang
doesn’t she cannot promote herself if
she had legs she would
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An essay by alum Shadab Zeesht Hasmi (poetry, ’09) appears at 3 Quarks Daily:
Okra, mint and chilies grow in the back and marigolds and roses in the front yard; they’re in my peripheral vision as I bike and study. The seeing is important. Before my grandmother began teaching me and before I owned a student desk with wheels, I didn’t care much for Math. It’s now a ritual: I roll my desk out of my room to the verandah, bring a stack of paper and ask my grandmother to give me Math problems I can solve. I do this after my daily bike ride in the yard. My grandmother reads the newspaper while I work on equations. Occasionally, she shares a news item of interest. Twice I’ve seen her tear up reading about the brutality of the Indian military in Kashmir. She is a Kashmiri. She folds her spectacles and closes her eyes when I ask her for a story; it’s typically the one from the Quran about Moses in a floating basket, how he chose coals over gold, and the knotting of his tongue. There is too much brutality in the world and not enough words. The knotted tongue resonates with me.
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