New World Writing Quarterly

Polaroid

We’ve gone through the rooms togeth­er, assigned
this keep­sake and that. Who knows what
we’ve missed, or over­looked, what’s lost
or for­got­ten, but at least I found the shoebox
stuffed with old pho­tos. It has some­thing
–more

Entrance

When it’s time to enter
I’m stand­ing in line
stand­ing and wait­ing in line
I don’t even know if I’m entering
or wait­ing to enter
is it eas­i­er to enter
when you don’t even know
if you are?
–more

Absurdery

Once upon this time, in a coun­try far away, the ruler was very
old. The red hats had begun to dol­ly him to the podium,

his jack­et flap­ping, at first with the cur­tain closed. He enjoyed
the ride, the breeze of it, like a tilt­ing Segway. –more

Four years ago, fol­low­ing a a fair­ly bru­tal two-year bat­tle with can­cer, my moth­er died; a relief, in the end, though it still does­n’t feel so. Some deep-lying tumour in the breast missed by the usu­al mam­mo­grams and only caught after it had already –more

1

The Wise Woman of Elety was tak­ing her young grand­son along on a boat trip to Joramca, the island of flow­ers. This was the peak sea­son for the rarest blooms. Though she wasn’t sure they would inter­est him, she thought she’d take a chance. She –more

FORGOTTEN WHEELS

Abandoned shop­ping carts
roll like patients in a hospital.
Wheels frozen, spin­ning in puddles,
car­ry­ing the bags of
mid­night customers,
gro­ceries for families
liv­ing in burn­ing buildings.

Footsteps echo in the
park­ing lot,
walk­ing –more

LATE NIGHT, WYOMING, 1972

Ten days out of high school I was on a Greyhound head­ed west with John K. It was his idea to ride bus­es and hitch­hike to California or until our mon­ey ran out. I’d been try­ing to decide what to do with my life, maybe go to –more

1. Elastic Band

She found a thick blue elas­tic band, frayed and crum­bling around the edges, wrapped around a jar of hair­clips. It had once wound around the gai-lan stem from Chinatown. She was six. The wet scent of the veg­eta­bles and soy filled –more

The first day of fall quar­ter I meet the young man who will kill me. Dressed in black, the stone-faced boy stomps past me to the back of the class­room. He smirks a chal­lenge, snort­ing at the shar­ing of pro­nouns. I hope he’ll drop the class, but he –more

The AI Wishes It Was a Plough

or a screw­driv­er, a tooth­brush, a spatula—anything
with­out elec­tric­i­ty or mov­ing parts. Even a stapler
would be too much. Even a pair of scis­sors, a paper
clip. The AI yearns, nat­u­ral­ly, for a pure sim­plic­i­ty
–more

Hiroshi Sugimoto’s pho­to­graph, Sea of Japan, Hokkaido, frames the hori­zon dead cen­ter – wisps of gray clouds above slate and onyx rip­ples. It’s nei­ther night nor day. I asked my son what he remem­bered about our trip to Japan. He was –more

The Stream

I am four years old, walk­ing bare­foot in a cold, clear, flow­ing stream. My mom holds my hand as we step around rocks, our feet sink­ing into the soft silt of the streambed. It’s a hap­py adven­ture, until we get out and my mom dis­cov­ers a –more

Messes

Jason’s moth­er opens the door to his room to tell him she has a new boyfriend. He is stay­ing overnight now and Jason should know. “Roy does­n’t want to scare you or any­thing if you run into each oth­er in the morning.”

“All right.”

She stands –more

They drove from San Anselmo to Mill Valley for a Christmas cel­e­bra­tion in the town cen­ter.  Both towns were in Marin County, just north of San Francisco, across the Golden Gate Bridge, but Mill Valley, being clos­er to the city, and more seclud­ed amongst –more

There are things you do only when your life is falling apart. I want­ed to say, there are things you do only when your life falls apart. It sounds punchi­er. But the gerund there mat­ters. You have to be inside the falling. The –more