Creative
Nonfiction
March Contributors
Daniel Bailey, Chel Campbell, Ari Cordovero, Zary Fekete, L.F. Graubard, David Hensen, Sara Hutchinson, Uma Jagwani, Richard Leise, Lorette C. Luzajic, Magda Lynne, Alex Palmatier, A.L. Smith, Lillian Taylor, and Katie Vinson
March Highlights
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the red-haired american
CNF by L.F. Graubard
“Ronald Pelton. Pale, soft voice, face like the uncle who teaches you chess and guilt. Not dangerous at first glance, but glowing underneath.”
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this is about nothing
CNF by Uma Jagwani
“In the elevator, I look at my sweaty, meaningless face and feel disappointed. Not white! As if one day, I’ll step into this elevator and exit on the seventh floor as a part of the ruling class.”
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chosen descent
CNF by Zary Fekete
“I think about how much of my life has been engineered for ease. How many ramps I’ve taken without noticing. How often I’ve mistaken friction for failure instead of proof of contact.”
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whiskey and fire
CNF by A. L. Smith
“The library book says you need a candle, a personal item from your target, and the incantation— then, BAM! Hexed!”
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the aching absence of song
Micro CNF by Alex Palmatier
“I wonder if you were put away for longer, things would have been different. Or if they gave you a guitar. What I would give to hear you play again.”
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plucking
Micro CNF by Chel Campbell
“A white egg cracks. Death’s indifferent eyes cloud over with the golden yolk of time.”
case review
by Kathryn Reese
“My ex beside me, blocking my view of my daughter. My daughter, the sort of fighter who hides behind her hair.”
photo of grandpa, or kingdom of mud
by Aaron Tomey
“He lived in a shed in my grandparents’ backyard, hidden from a world that had trouble looking into his one remaining eye, surrounded by “walls… covered from floor to ceiling with pictures of adult pornography”
fisherman
by Zary Fekete
“We stood by the river. The fishing line in his hand like a quiet reward. Behind us, Váci Street shimmered with glass storefronts and clean white signage. Leather handbags, crystal shops, wine bars with English menus. The river didn’t care. It flowed between both lives, unbothered.”
gentian
by Basil Rosa
“It drove me to realize there is no single moment when we happen.”
hurricane tee tee
by JD Clapp
“Wait…You gave your friend a hundred bucks to give Pops a hand job? In Chris’s car?”
miami’s forgotten nature
by Anthony David Vernon
“Ghost trees, gators, and green grasses act as hosts to a wide river. The Everglades is an exit, a slow race to the sea, the type of host that invites you to leave.”
the well driller
by Michael Templeton
“Blanchot tells us that “(f)orgetting causes language to rise up in its entirety by gathering around the forgotten word” (The Infinite Conversation, 194).”
i refuse to become an ai smartphone zombie
by Ron Whitehead
“here is a struggle going on for our minds. Every form of expression is being attacked. The attack is overt and subtle. The attack manifests as mind manipulation. The attack is pervasive.”
words unwinged
by David Henson
“The heaps and our dismay grow. Resigned, we build bonfires and sweep in the words. As they ascend with the smoke, we wonder if we'll ever know their beauty again.”
my father’s country
by Johanna Nauraine
“What else might I expect from a man whose ancient language is ‘a means of communication and dialogue by the Hindu Celestial Gods.’”
“chimera”: a poem & study (from the poetic memoir autocartographies)
by Eva Alter
“The poem’s central metaphor invokes the mythic Chimera—a creature composed of disparate animal parts—as an embodiment of fractured identity.”
aloft somewhere beyond comprehension
by Basil Rosa
“The payments on accrued interest alone for each of the creditors I owe money to will keep me pumping cream into doughnuts in this kitchen for up to fifty hours a week until I’m a corpse.”
field trips
by Marcia E. Williams
“The sun's orb, brilliant orange from smoke particles in the air, dipped below the western horizon as lenticular clouds morphed from warm pink to flat gray.”
going mobile
by Leah Mueller
“My best friend Ezra, a huge fan, was flat broke and lived on my couch in Madison. He never offered much monetary help, but he was good in bed.”
it all began, begins with words
by Emma Wilkins
“We can’t begin, or can at best only begin to understand, this place—its origins, and ours. And we begin, time and time again, with words.”
leaving (dejando)
by Casey Jo Graham Welmers
“The twin towers still punctuated the skyline in New York City, and I could have easily boarded the plane with a chunky shoe full of prison shanks were I so inclined.”
little detectives: a reflection
by Adrian Kresnak
“There’s a children’s museum that used to have a severed head in a freezer.”
as i grow old, i remember
by JB Polk
“…I believe that life, whether one is young or old, must be lived and commemorated as it comes.”