Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie Writing Around the Edges “I learned to write around the edges.” Wanda Coleman I wake up every day at 4AM while the house is quiet. I write for three hours until the children wake up.…
Browsing: Prose
The Way We Worked, In Three Acts by Jamie Wagman I. Long Ago My grandmother worked in kitchens, professional and home, pouring coffee and working a register, working from recipes and working from memory. Her hands were smooth velvet,…
Threads of Connection by Nancy Gerber My grandmother was an artist with needle and thread. By the time I was born, she had retired as a seamstress who took in sewing to help my grandfather, a tailor, make ends…
The Art of Making Hard Work Look Easy, or Simply Paid in Gratitude by Edward D. Currelley My mother Annie used to get up long before the crack of dawn; first things first, her coffee. The essential part of getting…
Ten Self-Care Tips It was cold and dark when I left, but I had no choice. If I was going to hear even a whisper of my own thoughts, let solitude massage my attitude, and feel my shoulders release while…
Brainwalk by May Joseph On October 30, 2012, Hurricane Sandy enveloped downtown Manhattan in a total blackout. The terrifying reality of living on the top floor of a tall skyscraper without electricity, a generator or emergency lights hit home. My…
May Joseph Cricket Sounding Darkness March 5, 2016 An abandoned house with red tiled roof in decay rises across the small hill. It appears so much smaller, innocuous, from how I remember it. It is my mother’s childhood…
Mrs. Yip the funeral director called. “Your father must have loved you children so much, because when I touched his body the skin disintegrated in my hands.” My father’s will to live through his two years of terminal colon cancer…
By now, it’s a familiar lament. Usually it hits mid-semester, when the honeymoon period is over and the work has really piled up. I ask them how they’re doing, and in response they cover their faces with their hands and…
When I finally sit down to write poetry at 9 p.m. in my “office” – which is my laptop sitting on my long wooden dining room table – I usually hear a drama-filled voice start calling, “Mama, mama, come quick!…