41Feb 21, 2022
2021 I’m sitting in the impossibly white waiting area of South Campus, Calgary’s new state-of-the-art hospital. My husband of two years, himself a doctor, has canceled his office for the day, to be beside me. On my other side is my child’s transgender partner, a dapper young dude in a striped T-shirt bright with the […]
42Feb 21, 2022
The flowers lose themselves in grieving and each petal falls like a day that never was, but we all agree, should have been. I am furious that halfway through my mother’s service I can think of nothing but a cigarette; did her life mean less to me than nicotine? Shall I think of her now […]
43Feb 21, 2022
In Byron, Illinois in 1989, young state scholars and linebackers and thespians communicate their affection for their girlfriends with opal rings. Delicate, fragile, luminescent. Stones that can’t get too hot or cold or they’ll shatter. They have to be cared for, much like the girls’ hearts. I don’t think 17-year-old boys make the poetic connection. […]
44Feb 21, 2022
Kids ride bikes along the paths in Falkner Park on a warm spring day as parents watch from nearby benches. Couples stroll across freshly-mown and edged green lawns, recline in the shade of oak, sycamore and plane trees. American and Australian flags rustle in the breeze outside the house facing the park as the homeowner […]
45Feb 21, 2022
She wanted the world. She wished for the first crisp bite of every red apple. She sought to paint a satisfying stroke across each of our white walls before leaving the room. My Celeste, full of light, sat and thought and was filled with want. That year I selected a gift she would treasure. I […]
46Feb 21, 2022
And Now, a Word from Violet Beauregarde I told you I was more of a gum girl. But you offered something I thought I should want, so I didn’t refuse. I was a child, after all. You reminded me of someone I loved: cane on cobblestones, slow mornings in the park. It was a lie. […]
47Feb 21, 2022
Red drips from the moon, like water off the glass leaving wet rings on our moving box coffee table—I’ll buy a real one in a week or two, sometime after I pay the internet bill. According to the Bible, when the sixth seal opens there will be a great Earthquake—the sun will blacken, the moon […]
48Feb 21, 2022
One Friday in July I knocked off work early because I was seeing someone later in the West Village. As a census taker in Harlem, I knew where to buy the best bean pie, ginger beer, smothered chicken, pork ribs, and what have you. I also knew all the sidewalk vendors. That Friday, I was […]
49Feb 21, 2022
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in six years he’s published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 175 journals and anthologies on five continents. Publications include 580 Split, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Hippocampus, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, […]
50Feb 21, 2022
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding career in public health research. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in six years he’s published nonfiction, poetry, and photography in over 175 journals and anthologies on five continents. Publications include 580 Split, Bombay Gin, Burningword, Camas, Columbia Journal, Hippocampus, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, […]