An excerpt from an essay by Alyson Mosquera Dutemple (fiction ’19), published by Fiction Writers Review.

Eye of the Storm: Interlude in the Penultimate Space

Years before meeting my father, my mother had another husband. But because that husband, the first one, amounted to no more than a blip on the radar of my mother’s life (18 months to be precise), and because my mother and father will be celebrating their 44th wedding anniversary this spring, the existence of this mysterious first husband is now of little concern.

There was a time, however, when I was consumed by this information. I was five, and I had suddenly discovered a photo album full of wedding pictures from that short-lived marriage in the back of the coat closet in my childhood home. While photographs of my own parents’ marriage decorated the walls of our living room, the ones from that first marriage had been relegated to the darker recesses of the house. And though I can no longer remember the particulars about how I came to discover in the first place that my mother had been married before (did she tell me before I discovered the photographs, or had I guessed only after looking at the pictures?), I do remember that my mother kindly allowed me to look at the album whenever I liked because she wanted to be open with me and to honor my curiosity.

Which turned out to be abundant. For a few months, I became mildly obsessed with this man, this figure who, had my mother’s life not taken a different path, could have been my father. It both bothered me and fascinated me that a person’s life could be profoundly affected by such a fleeting trifle: a photo album tucked in a dark closet, a ghost-like figure haunting its pages from a time years before I was born.

[…continue reading “Part I: Berriault’s ‘The Stone Boy'” and find “Part II: Trevor’s ‘Le Visiteur'” at Fiction Writers Review.]

An excerpt from “Dogs on the Beach” by Taryn Tilton (fiction ’16), published by Waxwing.

Dogs on the Beach

I do not like things I cannot see the shape of: there are dogs on the beach in the distance, there’s breathing under the bridge.

It’s early morning. I’m out of breath. I’ve buried my feet in the sand. The dogs hobble and call out but I can’t be sure because I’m on the phone with my sister, who is telling me about a new kind of meditation. You tie a small weight to the end of a string, swallow it, and hold on to the other end. You wait for two days until it passes through your body. Then you have one end between your legs and the other out your mouth. She anticipates all my questions. “What then?” I ask. You can pull it, slowly. “Isn’t that harmful?” I ask. It’s just a string, she says, but I meant a kind of damage unseen.

[…continue reading at Waxwing.]

An excerpt from “When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am” by Matt Hart (poetry ’02) published by Waxwing.

When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am

In a car in Ohio, I am sitting
against the sky eating blackberries — truly
the biggest ones I have ever seen
in this life. They were grown in Kentucky,

which is just across the river

[…continue reading “When I’m By Myself I’m Very Different Than I Am,” as well as several other poems by Matt Hart, at Waxwing.]

An excerpt from “What She Is Not” by Emilie Pascale Beck (fiction ’17) published by Waxwing.

What She Is Not

You stood with the fat girls on the corner of Leavenworth and O’Farrell. Junkies nodded down on Eddy, and boys posed on Polk. You weren’t fat, but you were a freak, and the fat girls let you stand with them because no one else would.

Elvis Presley played in mourning from radios as the cars circled around and around, Valiants and GTOs slowing, men scanning the merchandise, settling for the most their money could buy. The ones who stopped for you didn’t know they were looking for you. How could they have imagined your eyes, which showed up on your face along different planes? The way one eyeball floated away, so they couldn’t be sure if you were looking at them or the moon. They wouldn’t have thought to crave your uneven, cone-shaped tits. But they stopped for you anyway. A good excuse not to have to look at you as they came in your hand, your mouth, your ass, between your pitiful breasts, on your ugly face, however they wanted, yelling at you, bitchcuntwhore, slapping you, punching you, pinching your half-assed tits, hating you while they fucked you in their dark cars, grateful that they didn’t have to think about you afterwards, a crumpled $10 bill stuffed in your sticky hand. They drove their rusted Plymouths and Pontiacs back into the night while your stomach growled.

[…continue reading at Waxwing.]

headshot of Candace Walsh (fiction '19) gazing at the camera wearing a blue cardigan.

An excerpt from “The Power Paragraph” by Candace Walsh (fiction ’19), published by Fiction Writers Review.

With Some help from Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, Candace Walsh explores the power of the paragraph.

The Power Paragraph

Fiction writers agonize about using le mot juste, and we also strive for finely honed sentences. But what of the paragraph? A power paragraph can serve as a story’s fuse box, sending softly glowing, undulating, or hissing-hot power to different parts and levels of a story. This power paragraph can also serve as a hinge in the middle of a novel, as it does in Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel The Price of Salt, looking forward and backward, to the future and the past, like Janus (Chronos), the two-faced Roman god of gates, transitions, and dualities. Engaging with the idea of a power paragraph can help to focus one’s writing at an initial stage, or serve as a keystone in a work that is closer to being finished.

[…continue reading at Fiction Writers Review.]

An excerpt from “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” by Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet (poetry ’05) published by The Collagist.

Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)

and how could I have come
more than halfway and not know, I mean

I say it often enough. This is how
we talk tough, out here in the dark wood

where the direct way is lost though hey
it looks pretty clear to me, one-way trip

fire to fire. Even you, asshole,
the one with the big gun

on your shoulder, brandishing your right
to brandish your fear.

[…continue reading “Crone poem (we’re all gonna die)” at The Collagist.]

An excerpt from “House of Unending” by Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry ’10) published by Poetry.

House of Unending

1

The sinner’s bouquet, house of shredded & torn
Dear John letters, upended grave of names, moon
Black kiss of a pistol’s flat side, time blueborn
& threaded into a curse, Lazarus of hustlers, the picayune
Spinning into beatdown; breath of a thief stilled
By fluorescent lights, a system of 40 blocks,
Empty vials, a hand full of purple cranesbills,
Memories of crates suspended from stairs, tied in knots
Around streetlamps, the house of unending push-ups,
Wheelbarrows & walking 20s, the daughters
Chasing their fathers’ shadows, sons that upset
The wind with their secrets, the paraphrase of fractured,
Scarred wings flying through smoke, each wild hour
Of lockdown, hunger time & the blackened flower.

[…continue reading “House of Unending” at Poetry.]

An excerpt from “Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot” by Angel Nafis (poetry ’19), published by Poetry.

Ode to Dalya’s Bald Spot

my sister wraps the throw
around herself on the small
cream loveseat & i know
for sure that she is not
a speck of dirt on a pill.
she coughs & sniffs up all
the lucky air in the room
into her excellent nostrils,
which are endless
holy wells replenishing
the soft architecture of her guts.
not even the lupus can interrupt
this ritual of beholding.

[…continue reading at Poetry.]

An excerpt from “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” by Rose Auslander (poetry ’15) published by The Piltdown Review.

Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych

and what remains of us? A plateful of cherries
spilled, half-eaten, a breast forgotten, dangling

from a torn bodice, men bellowing drunk
nuns plucking lutes, blind to children
begging naked in the water and
the fool we raised on high to guide

our leaking vessel, canvas torn, paint
cracked with age or by his rage—

[…continue reading “Ship of Fools: Surviving Fragment of Triptych” at The Piltdown Review.]

An excerpt from “Greenhousing” by Sarah Audsley (poetry ’19), published by Tupelo Quarterly.

Greenhousing

I’ll push against—
                what did you say—any
                                edge. An orchid cannot
impregnate it-
                self. Stamen & pistil sound
like dirty words, but they’re necessary.
                I know how
                                to push
                against the glass. I was a seed.

[…continue reading “Greenhousing” at Tupelo Quarterly.]