A poem by alum Muriel Nelson (poetry, ’96) appears at the Cortland Review:
See. Fog’s forming outside, too. Its
blankness arrives there and here
out of nothing. It smothers casually,
but weakens in heat:
it comes to nothing.
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A short story by alum Dawn Abeita (fiction, ’96
) appears at the Cortland Review:
The day before my mother died our dog, Oblivious, hid under her bed. She was under there an afternoon, a night, and a morning when my mother made it worse by lying on the floor and handfeeding it bits of leftover hamburger. “When she gets hungry, she’ll come out,” I said. Several times. My mother did not believe she should listen to a twelve-year-old, only vice versa.
“What’s gotten into her?” she asked. She was the one who named the dog.
I said, “Now she’s going to poop under the bed. You’ll have to move the bed to clean it up.”
“You don’t know everything,” my mom said. “Don’t you have homework?”
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An essay by alum Jeneva Burroughs Stone (poetry, ’07) appears at the New England Review’s blog:
Of quantum physics, Einstein remarked, God does not play dice, by which he meant the appearance of randomness is always an illusion. Scientific analysis must yield law, rules, properties. Other physicists disagree in an ongoing theoretical contest pitting Einstein’s classical determinism against quantum randomness. No victor has yet emerged: unity or scatter?
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A poem by alum Laure-Anne Bosselaar (poetry, ’94) appears at Connotation Press:
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An excerpt from a story by alum Nathan Poole (fiction, ’11) appears at The Kenyon Review:
In the matted field beside the fairgrounds a young couple worked the idling cars. They had spray bottles and squeegees they lifted from a gas station, and the girl was making all the money. She wore a tight, black dress and yellow, thigh-high knit socks and had to stand on the tires of the lifted trucks while the men stared down at her from their cabs.
It had been like this for two days. Tahoes full of Sigma Alpha Epsilons chanting; lone men in battered vans on parking duty, their families dropped off at the fair entrance; onyx-black Suburbans, the bass rasping the license plates.
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Two poems by alum Ross White (poetry, ’08) appear at Tinderbox Poetry Journal:
Here Be Monsters
At this point, land disappears into a tail,
a serpent with forked tongue,
scales, eight muscled legs.
Continue reading this poem online, and find Ross’ second poem, “Damned If You Do and Damned If You Do,” here.
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
Continue reading poems online…
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