(“Stone Disease,” n: The Victorian obsession with constructing monuments) Sarah Winchester, Having Been Rescued from Her House, Considers Rebuilding (Apr 20, 1906) Already, the newspapers are shilling for new buildings: safer, stronger, walls that will withstand the earth’s dis-ease, as if windows could be willows: tousled, weeping glass, unbreaking. Why should I believe?—stretching the chimney […]
Author: JMT
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Stone Disease | By Alexandra Teague
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Safe | By Alexandra Teague
“The more comfortable man makes himself indoors, the more dangerous do earthquakes become.” “Let us all banish from our minds forebodings of the future. WE ARE SAFE. Of this we may feel assured.” -San Jose Mercury News, late April 1906 When your city wakes as the new ancient ruins: blocks’ […]
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Beauty
The Dog Coat | By Adrienne Su I brought a dog-fur coat home from China in 1988, after an academic year there. Off-white, soft, and substantial, it was a gift from a great-uncle I hadn’t met until he came to Shanghai to greet me. He’d spent three days on a packed train to get there, […]
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The radiation came to an end
Preston | By William Gilson Author’s Note: In this short work of fiction, Burt, age 75, an American living permanently in England, is writing to an old friend in the States. I enjoyed the drives to Preston. I managed to arrange a schedule of early appointments so I was always one of the first patients […]
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Hear that sound?
Things Green | By Shara Lessley I saw the usual spray of buildings, streetlamps buzzing. As the plane descended, I also saw pinpricks of green. Tucked into peaks and hills, into flatter stretches I guessed were desert. Lodged in the Middle Eastern capital itself: green and green and green. Like fish scales. Or small sequins. Green that seemed to say, welcome. […]
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Daily Dickinson
On Devotional Reading | By Traci Brimhall A few months ago, one of my friends and I decided to enter into a five-year relationship with Emily Dickinson. The rules were broad: read an Emily Dickinson poem each day (starting with number one in the volume of Dickinson’s poetry edited by Thomas H. Johnson), and write […]
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The Square Root of 6400
Genius | By Jeff Friedman When Jeremy Wiggins announced he was a genius, Bobby Miller said, “a genius at what?” and Ronnie Rappaport raised his baseball bat and threatened to bonk him on the head, if he didn’t “stop it with that genius stuff.” It wasn’t the first time Wiggins had claimed to be a genius, […]
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The Rivalry
Faulkner vs. Hemingway | By Joseph Fruscione It took me until 1998, when I went to graduate school, to begin to appreciate Hemingway. In my junior year of high school, I couldn’t finish The Old Man and the Sea soon enough. In my senior year of college, I couldn’t finish The Nick Adams Stories soon enough. […]
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A single year
Brook Lane | By Leslie Bazzett On a still day, you can see the greater stillness of the homes reflected on the surface of the lake. Houses of stucco and brick, with rows of silent blue-black windows. Some have Spanish tile roofs, and limestone terraces that are leaf-swept and beautifully worn like ancient marble. In […]
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Failure to Disappear
On Dennis Oppenheim | By Scott Nadelson Not long ago, on the first anniversary of a close friend’s death, I pulled a disc from my wife’s collection of film and video art. She’s a video artist herself, and her collection is extensive, but when I went to her shelf I didn’t know what I was […]