New World Writing

The weath­er on the Carolina coast had been strange; a result of trop­i­cal depres­sion rem­nants. The sky cleared on a Thursday and the beach­es filled. I stubbed out a Spirit and popped the top on a new beer. Down the beach, a tod­dler walked toward the ocean hold­ing a beach ball over his head with both hands. A wave knocked him over and sent the beach ball sail­ing for­ward. The wind took it out to –more

In a shift of policy & concept, we are hoping to expand our little operation to include all kinds of content — fiction, poetry, music, art, photographs, nonfiction, interviews, asides, short reports, journalism, opinion, whatev. Thus we invite contributors to send to us any such material at the Submissions link above. We will look at everything and publish what we can.

I’m Mo, the girl who for the brief time, when I still tried to feel like a girl, nev­er felt like I fit that descrip­tion, nev­er felt like a boy either, felt like some­thing else. How was I sup­posed to get my head around that?

The answer is: I didn’t.

Instead, I whacked a field hock­ey ball, or a soft­ball, or a vol­ley­ball, any damned ball I could find to whack. I let my sis­ters curl my hair and smear –more

Ngantukisme

Lonely girl. Face bathed in the glow of your phone.

You were walk­ing to the super­mar­ket. A per­son walk­ing in front of you fell to the side­walk. You checked her pulse; she wasn’t dead. Just sleep­ing.

All around you, peo­ple began tee­ter­ing. Falling asleep on their feet. Cars rolled aim­less­ly to a halt. Some bumped into the curb.

At the super­mar­ket, cus­tomers and stock­ers and cashiers draped over each –more

Saturday night was movie night. Dad took us. This was Mom’s time, a few hours of perfume‑y mag­a­zines and white wine and wear­ing her fuzzy blue bathrobe with no one in the house. At the the­ater we gig­gled and threw pop­corn and peo­ple told us to shush. Dad, he didn’t care. He didn’t say any­thing, one way or the oth­er. He’d just sit there in his seat and stare at the ceil­ing like it could open –more

Beadie

An ass­hole is an ass­hole but I love a first sen­tence. The thing is there isn’t much of one—it’s just what you believe in from before you knew it to what exists past us. I’m watch­ing Jimmy. I’m watch­ing myself cross my legs. I am some­where in the midst of a morn­ing. I’m watch­ing no one. I’m cross­ing noth­ing. The rest of the sen­tence begins when you shut the help off.

__

25,000 To 30,000 Black Bears

I am a new silence –more

After see­ing a pho­to in the local news­pa­per of Ms. Rodgers coach­ing girl’s soc­cer, Wyatt decid­ed to vis­it his for­mer teacher, a favorite in ele­men­tary school. He will have time after school to catch a bus back to his uni­ver­si­ty for the new semes­ter.

Wyatt is on his way to Chico State University, a minor school in the vast agri­cul­tur­al expanse of California’s San Joaquin Valley. Yes, it is –more

I can hear their voic­es through the wait­ing room walls. My daugh­ter, with her big per­son­al­i­ty and pearl-speck­led beret, mak­ing the den­tal assis­tants and hygien­ists laugh. That baby girl came fast the first day of win­ter. A hard, cold day of gray asphalt and Canada Dry bill­boards. My hus­band speed­ing through the loops and turns. She almost arrived in the car, and then again in the park­ing lot.

And –more

I love Ruby Sales. She’s taught us a lot. You can google her sto­ry, see how she lost the abil­i­ty to speak for a spell at sev­en­teen when a white man squeezed the trig­ger of a shot­gun and blew a hole in the body of a young white sem­i­nar­i­an named Jonathon Daniels who had thrown his body in front of Ruby, sav­ing her life, but it’s dif­fi­cult to under­stand the enor­mi­ty of who Ruby Sales is unless –more

Housemaid’s Knee

“I am get­ting a house­maid­’s knee, kneel­ing here gulp­ing beau­ty.”
                –Amelia Earhart

This is the knee’s response
to the poem. It is the cal­lous
that can’t afford a white dress,

the price of inno­cence ris­ing
like oceans over retir­ing hous­es.
And day, itself, a scor­pi­on

which waits for bed. You must
write dread, the uncle of con­fu­sion,
the sec­ond cousin of curs­es.

Only –more

To the riv­er La Varenne run­ning over the rock dam at the bot­tom of my gar­den

To the tow­er of the 11th-cen­tu­ry church, Notre Dame sur L’Eau, I see from the win­dow of my third-floor study

To the cloud-fil­tered light of Normandy that inspired Impressionists

To the aro­ma inside the boulan­gerie

To the taste of Camembert at room tem­per­a­ture

To the fra­grance of Marius –more

The way I know all of what hap­pens today is that when you die, the whole world opens up to you, and you can, if you so wish, go back and forth through all of your years includ­ing these last hours, in no time at all. There is, con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, no flash­ing involved, because past a point time isn’t rel­a­tive, it is entire­ly redun­dant, and every­thing turns—for the first and only time—however –more

1. An out-of-con­trol trol­ley hur­tles toward a crowd of pro­test­ers car­ry­ing “BLUE LIVES MURDER” signs. You could pull a lever so the trol­ley instead hits a board­ed up, emp­ty Starbucks. What

It’s a large uni­ver­si­ty library, many cor­ners to hide in. I lost my purse there.

All kinds of things get lost.

Even libraries dis­ap­pear. The Great Library at Alexandria burned, but one has hope that frag­ments will sur­face in some cave or shop or attic. Or maybe we’ll build a machine to take us into the past and see what it was like. Wait, we already have that: books, doc­u­ments, art. The paint­ings –more