Nonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 1,392 by Emily Duren Names in this piece have been changed. he only reason I’m alive today is because of the diligence of my mother and the willingness of a YouTube vlogger to share her life with the world. It was late 2013 and just about four years since I had started taking Keppra, an anticonvulsant, to keep my seizures in check. Only it wasn’t working. After not ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Unmanageable Care by Shara Kronmal on’t call me ‘ma’am.’ It’s ‘Doctor,’” I snap at Barbara, a nurse. I am trying to get insurance to authorize treatment for Sam, my patient, who is severely depressed and needs a course of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT), often called shock therapy. Sam and I often joke about ECT. “Time to get zapped?” I ask him when he seems low. “Can’t I just stick ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 The Words by Suzanne Samuels y son is here. He comes in the door and approaches me. I’m in my wheelchair. He reaches down and embraces me. I struggle to say his name, telling myself he deserves the effort. I see the letters in my mind. I try to make the sound that is his name. That name as familiar to me as my own. There was ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Three Poems by Suellen Wedmore Alzheimer’s It’s just that when I walk through a door, A different person walks out the other side. Mary, Mary, quite contrary, oh, where Are all my children now? Pease porridge cold, See me hobble along the floor, eighty-nine Years old? Or sit patient at my bedside, Waiting for my John, and when I complain My son whispers in my ear, He’s gone. Was he your father then, that ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Unnameable by Sam Moore Unnameable Speak no evil don’t say its name, talk in euphemism or innuendo. Say things like playing for both sides, like I’m some sort of Russian spy. Or use phrases like swing both ways, even as I swing away from you. But everything you’ve told me… Like you’ve heard all I have to say. Like you’ve heard every name I’ve been called.Sam Moore is a writer of poetry, prose, and drama. His poetry has ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Three Poems by Laurie Kolp Surrounded by Strangers The father is flawed. His comatose body shows lines of doubt arrowed to almond eyes and angled between them. Even asleep, he wears the years deep. The wife droops beside him like a coneflower while the daughter holds his limp hand. The son paces the hospital room, gets nowhere with his rant about the other car, how he would sue the driver for passing on a double line. Around the bend it came into their lane, he ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 The Striker Talks with the Doctor by John Davis The Striker Talks with the Doctor I might have said it hurts worse when you squeezed my knee, twisted it medial to lateral, or when you gripped my meniscus with your thumb, rubbed up and down the tibia and I might have jumped more when you thumbed my IT band. I might have screamed Uncle the way I do when my cousin squeezes my wrist just this side of ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Two Poems by Fae Kayarian The Color Blue I study the pathologies of memory. You can only imagine how ironic it was when I found you caught in the net I had only cast for others. I see it in your sea storm eyes. You know that something is missing, but you are too tangled to be set free and find it. You are the version of Ulysses who never returned home. Every time ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Two Poems by Danielle Salvadori Keeping Score She said let’s start with history, how the counts rose and fell and rose again, the score that points to what’s going on, what we have. Don’t scream, I’ve done everything I should’ve, the cells win over will, you can’t beat the count however hard you try. That’s the score. You must measure, keep up the score, grasp hold of science with all you have, and fill the ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #1: Conversation March 15th, 2019 March 15th, 2019 Sella Turcica by Amy Baskin Sella Turcica —part of the sphenoid In my skull, a butterfly bone flutters, restless, slipped saddle to lobes and glands. She registers distress reading the skull’s cryptic Braille. Her hands harness. Replace on rails this drawer that moments ago would not shut. Now will it hold my thoughts? Amy Baskin reads “Sella Turcica”: Amy Baskin’s recent work has appeared in VoiceCatcher, Cirque, and Friends Journal. She is a 2019 Oregon Literary Arts fellowship recipient. When not writing, she matches international students at Lewis ...
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