Interview Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 “Storytelling: An Act of Hope”: PSM Talks with Alex Kotlowitz by Tracy Granzyk lex Kotlowitz’s An American Summer: Love and Death in Chicago might be considered a bookend to a 40-year career writing about the violence and the communities affected by it. In An American Summer he returns to the neighborhoods and relationships forged while writing There Are No Children Here, published in 1991 and named one ...
Read MoreInterview Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 “Health Care Is a Sacred Mission”: PSM Talks with Carl Shuker by A. M. Larks arl Shuker’s books are bound by place and demarcated by time. Whether he is writing about turn-of-the-century Tokyo, middle-class New Zealand and the age when we transition from children to adults, or Lebanon in the Arab Spring, Shuker finds the story to tell. In his most recent novel, A Mistake, Shuker pits his ...
Read MoreArt Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Artist’s Statement by Darrell Black Allegiance by Darrell Black he artwork titled Allegiance depicts a military person who has suffered the enormous hardship of war with its many personal sacrifices, and upon returning home, the soldier is given a hero’s welcome for having great courage in helping to defend freedom. In return, the brave soldier puts his or her good hand over their heart, emotionless. The audience ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Letter from the Nonfiction Editor: Writing Through the Pain by Grace Jasmine ain is a heavy subject. It is fraught with emotion, with drama, with real-life tragedy and hardship. It is an especially difficult subject to edit—but even more so, it is a terribly difficult subject about which to write. However, in this section, you will meet eight women of fortitude and courage, a tribe of unrelated but ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Letter from the Poetry Editor: Pain, Poetic Gifts, and the Reader’s Role by Steve Granzyk n the autumn of 2007, I was up late reading The Best American Essays 2006. By habit, I had been flipping through the volume’s pages, skimming opening paragraphs and bits of dialogue—you know, looking for something enticing. That’s how I encountered Marjorie Williams’ “A Matter of Life and Death.” After an unsettling ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Listener by Jo Ann Benda Listener I lean over your belly, Large with pregnancy, Stethoscope to forehead. In this quiet interlude I process what I will say. The silent Doppler would be too Overt and transparent. I see your tears. There is no blame here. I need time, so I listen. Your heart already knows The child who no longer moves Is dead. I require a moment to prepare for When the evidence is undeniable. Jo Ann Benda reads “Listener”: Jo Ann Benda, ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 How Ehlers Danlos Taught Me Numbers Are Insufficient by Jessica Oesterle How Ehlers Danlos Taught Me Numbers Are Insufficient I tell the PA the pain is at a 6, but sometimes a 9-10. My answer is met with silence as he scans the paperwork, so I continue:.........it’s a parasitic vine seeded in the socket climbing up thready sinew veining across the scapula stitching between ribs and vertebrae choking the nerves sprouting there .........it’s an ...
Read MorePoetry Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 Two Poems by Steven Ratiner Kingdom Come “Pain carves this white chrysanthemum inside my brain, the bloom his royal emblem. Pain is my Emperor. I am but the delicate throne he deigns to rest upon. Once, they were rare, these royal audiences. Now they never end. Morphine, Dilaudid do not preclude his fearsome presence. I bow, forehead touching the cold tiled floor. It is not permitted to gaze upon the Emperor’s countenance. His face is divine. A glimpse, and toxins spill from my bowels, my eyes weep ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 The Episodes by Ilze Duarte t was a cool evening in the fall of 1982 in São Paulo, Brazil. I could hear my parents and my sister downstairs in the kitchen, finishing dinner. I was in bed, with my lamp light on, still recovering from “the episode,” as my family had come to call it. It took about three hours to go away this time. About six ...
Read MoreNonfiction Issue #2: Pain September 19th, 2019 September 19th, 2019 My Empty Embrace by Rebecca Ryall labor to deliver her through a fog of drugs and the hospital sounds of rubber shoes on lino, the beep of monitors, the hum of florescent lighting, the too-cold air and smell of latex gloves. She slips through the veil, slips on her skin, and becomes. Despite the classes and books, I am completely unprepared for the ways in which my ...
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