My Mother's Kitchen

by Kathryn Gahl | Feb 7, 2018 | Magazine Article

Beneath the butcher-wrap paperlay Formica of gray with black flecks,and after my mother and her side-kick Anita finished wrapping T-bones, roundsteaks, sirloins, blade roasts and pot roasts,they lugged in a 20-gallon pail of ground chuck and slapped and laughed the...

On the Anniversary of Her Son's Suicide

by Mary Rowin | Feb 7, 2018 | Magazine Article

So tell your story, each version more distantand yet … still fresh, never finished. No matter whether death was suddenor a gradual decline, devastation wraps itself as a binding and timeis a geometry of fractals, repetitions smaller … smaller … an intricacy that never...

Daily Reminders

by Paulette Laufer | Feb 7, 2018 | Magazine Article

You need to remind the mind over and over againto come back to quiet, to the dark hollows of where words and no wordsare found, like hunting morels in a forest. Be patient. It’s not an easy task.The mind doesn’t want togo there.It would rather grab the handlebars of a...

When the Great War

by Dominic Holt | Feb 7, 2018 | Magazine Article

As my mother tells it,when the Great Warcame        my Great-GrandmotherGuarneschella lied. Datesare relative.                   Domenicowouldn’t be 16. Wouldn’t beconscripted. Didn’t matter.Ran away                with his cousinto the front at 14. Earned hima...

Field Notes from a Christmas Bird Count

by Max Witynski | Feb 7, 2018 | Magazine Article

It’s 5:30 am on a Thursday, a week before Christmas. The four of us stand under a starry sky on a country road a few miles outside of Blanchardville, peering into a darkened stand of white pine with our hands cupped to our ears. The temperature is near zero, so this...