A poem by alum Rosalynde Vas Dias (poetry, ’06) appears at TAMSEN:
You walk to the river—
maybe it is snowing heavily,
you only have yarn mittens,
thin and holey. You look
at the steely surface eating the flakes,
the other shore veiled, lost.
Should there not be a boat,
a boatman? Or you lie in the dark,
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A poem by alum Jennifer Givhan (poetry, ’15) appears at the Kenyon Review:
1. Domestic Adoption:
No joke, black babies are cheaper—
white ones cost ten grand more. That’s not
how she phrased it on the phone
after the gauge of my uterus
had fixed itself on empty.
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A poem by alum Peg Alford Pursell (fiction, ’96) appears at The Cortland Review:
A poem by alum Hannah Fries (poetry, ’10) appears at The Cortland Review:
Sillage de la Reine
Rhizomes from a Tuscan iris
cured five years, jasmine,
orange blossom, tuberose,
(bergamot to lighten the head),
perfect blend for a lover
of gardens and soft intensity,
petals’ sticky uncurling
in sunshine’s glaze.
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A poem by alum John Minczeski (poetry, ’90) appears at The New Yorker:
The martyr does not die. He lives to create more like him.
The conscience lives behind an anonymous window
In tangletown. It is difficult to find the right one.
You call and call and there is no answer. But never
A busy signal. The martyrs climb one side
Of a mountain and descend the other. It is a world
Full of dangers, hidden crevasses, avalanches,
Two poems by alum Dilruba Ahmed (poetry, ’09) appear in the May/June 2016 issue of American Poetry Review. One of the poems is featured online:
“MOTHER’S REVENGE: AFGHAN WOMAN ‘KILLS 25 TALIBAN’ AFTER SON SHOT DEAD”
Careful, now,
the gun still
in my hands—
who among us
wouldn’t open
fire for smaller
a wound?
My hands reek
of gunpowder,
a carbine. Who
has not perceived
that parenting
is to savage
the beast
that threatens
our offspring?
Bear with me.
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An essay by alum Peggy Shinner (fiction, ’94) appears at Jet Fuel Review:
We didn’t have a bookshelf in our house. Behind the TV in the den there was my father’s bowling trophy and the one book he read, or at least bought, Jim Bouton’s Ball Four. We didn’t have a bookshelf until we hired Mr. Klück, a fat bossy Holocaust survivor-turned contractor to finish our basement, and then there were two built-in units with my mother’s dime store paperbacks (James Michener, Leon Uris, Jacqueline Susann), the white leather-bound World Book encyclopedia set with gold lettering on the spine, which I flipped through randomly, settling on biographies and pictures of tropical birds, and an improbable copy of Émile Zola’s Nana.
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Five poems by alum Pam Bernard (poetry, ’95) appear at Mudlark:
Marsyas’ Howl
the victor departs wondering whether out of Marsyas’ howling there will not someday arise a new kind of art— — Zbigniew Herbert
If not winter, what must Marsyas have felt, so artfully flayed, his visage stripped from him, all of a piece, until his fingertips were the last to know wholeness. He could see his countenance lifted from him just as this snow is lifted from us. Two fists Continue reading online...
A story by alum Ronald Alexander (fiction, ’13) appears at Hollywood Dementia:
As he slathered lotion on his face and scrubbed to remove the morning’s heavy makeup, he couldn’t help imagining what his father might say about a grown man who worried over his appearance. Van blotted with tissues and began to brush his hair, stiff with spray. He thrust his jaw forward and studied his reflection. He wondered about his weak chin and if that was the reason he was stuck in this network daytime soap opera with no offers for anything better.
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A short story by alum Ian Randall Wilson (poetry, ’02) appears at Solstice:
On Friday, following a cold night, the thermometer outside the Theatre District branch of Peoples Bank read 90° at 9:03 A.M. Mayor Bloomberg was on time for the taping of his weekly address. Zwakker awoke in his hotel with the radio tuned to a Christian station demonizing Islam; he changed the time before he located the off switch. An unidentified homeless man collapsed on a sewer grate at the corner of Worth & Baxter blocking a bus heading uptown. On the local ABC affiliate, the meteorologist, determined to prove she had not been hired merely for the size of her breasts, speculated that the earth had swung on its axis, shifting toward the sun, which accounted for the high temperatures outside; the channel went to commercial. Babe Parrell took a taxi to LaGuardia Airport and was halfway there before she realized she’d left her tickets at home; she started laughing. Fares who laughed for no good reason made all Sri Lankan cab drivers uneasy. Traffic was backed up on the Bronx-Whitestone bridge. A car belching an exhaust of burned oil entered the Midtown Tunnel. Downstairs in the lobby of Zwakker’s hotel, Zwakker passed by a turbaned Sikh who was drawing glances, the wrappings on his head a magnificent shade of purple — to some. At the front desk, Zwakker reviewed each item on his bill, noting the .0125% increase in city taxes since his last visit. He went through the revolving front doors, a square of bloodied tissue staunching a cut chin.
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