13 September 2006 Dear Albert, A return to the art … or is it merely a craft? Of letter-writing. Certainly different from writing an e-mail, which is generally dashed off in a few minutes—a single sitting at most. But still different from the old days of pen and ink or even of the manual […]
Nonfiction
A Tour of Ancient Lykia (A Letter Sent to Albert Goldbarth)
Red Memory
by Christian Sorace
After his collection of over 200 Chairman Mao souvenir buttons was stolen a few weeks prior, on February 25th, 2012, 71 year-old Li Decai used a red belt to hang himself from a beam two meters high in a shed in his bean and carrot field.1 Li Decai became a local celebrity in the county-town […]
Four Letters
by Michael Karl (Ritchie)
Dear Petronius, I used to climb to where the Latin texts were shelved, on the top floor of a very tall building appropriately called Acres of Books. Shuttered in that stifling room, with dust baking in the light of a lone sealed window during a particularly humid summer day, I rummaged among the books to […]
A Quiet Fighter
by Greg Hlavaty
When our group arrived at the put-in to the Chattooga River, Cathy, our veteran guide, was first to exit the car and get us unloading the paddling gear. All of us were rookie staff at the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC), a major rafting company in western North Carolina, but my girlfriend Jenn and I were the […]
What I Don’t Know about My Mother
by Graham Guest
(1) I don’t know her real, legal name: her name at birth. Once, I thought it was Marion Bush, but that turned out to be wrong. Oddly, my dad doesn’t know, either. (2) I don’t know who her parents, grandparents, etc., were. (3) I don’t know if she had any siblings. (4) I don’t know exactly […]
What I Know about My Mother
by Graham Guest
(1) I know she was born on January 19, 1923, and she will die in the Fall of 2008, at eighty- five years old. (2) I know she was originally from New Jersey, maybe near Teaneck. (3) I know there was a black and white photograph taken of her naked on a leopard-skin rug in […]
Eternally Yours
by Michael Gills
There’s a story that used to get told, Lara, of how my maternal grandfather lost his leg in a woodcutting accident and the unlucky events that followed. It most often starts in Danville, Arkansas, where Mama’s people—the Stepwells—were from, that brutal summer of 1952 when she was about to turn twelve, your age now. I […]
Close Call With Siberian Kick-boxers
by Robert Cowan
1. being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage The taciturn kick-boxers and I are exhausting the path of light through the trees, careening down a crevasse of road carved through remarkably straight conifers, when a full black vehicle much larger than our aluminum can charges us directly until […]
From Lost to Loved in Bihar
by Amy Gigi Alexander
For my brother Ahsan, whose name means “an act of kindness” and for my sister Salina, whose name means, “to bring peace” My voice is gone. It leaves me as I stand on a street corner, waiting for a moment to wade across a road awash in the Calcutta monsoon wilderness. The water is up […]
Letter to Laurena
by Hannah Dela Cruz Abramsa
Prima, when you called me, the trees were lit up with Christmas lights in the town where I lived, and the air was cold and smelled sour along the black river. I had happened earlier down the empty streets, my footsteps ringing out—that rapid, low-heeled sound of a woman walking alone. I stopped twice in […]
