New World Writing Quarterly

Nonfiction
Friends receive this shar­ing of my sto­ry with the love that is intend­ed. My sto­ry: A south­ern Black wom­an’s narrative/autobiographical song

1.

Nancy and I dri­ve the New Jersey Turnpike on our way to New York. I am com­pelled to New York –more

Middle

We’re sup­posed to be
tak­ing a break.
Again.
But we meet for dinner
and I take you back
to my sublet
push you down on the couch.
We’re sur­round­ed by photos
of peo­ple I don’t know.
Their –more

A white sand heron fell onto our prop­er­ty. I thought it was a stray garbage bag caught in the brush until my hus­band said oth­er­wise. It was beau­ty in death. Almost appeared still fly­ing. With long yel­low beak and green half-closed eye it appeared to –more

I keep check­ing Facebook, to see if she has read my emails, react­ed to my paint­ings, shown that sweet­ness that comes so rarely, but when it does, it’s like the jew­el of her smirk and lips and yet there are no words.

I need to block her. Let the addic­tion –more

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 –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

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?

–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 –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. –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 –more

–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 –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 –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 –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 –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, –more

1. An out-of-con­trol trol­ley hur­tles toward

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 –more