Survivor’s Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity by Artress Bethany White (New Rivers Press, 2022). Early in Survivor’s Guilt: Essays on Race and American Identity, Artress Bethany White writes that in 2016, as she was planning a … Read More
He was born with a silver knife in his mouth. And he was its first victim. —Osama Alomar Inside, the shop was limewashed and long enough to fit two barber chairs. A frameless mirror hung in front of … Read More
The local news, projected to the bar by way of their staticky, cafeteria tray–sized TV, warned of severe storm conditions, possible flash flooding. That afternoon, the odd car that passed by did not stop; everyone had a home to … Read More
The old man woke up screaming. The nurse, asleep in the next room and dreaming of the seaside, heard the scream as a black harpy screeching toward a flock of gulls circling the sea. The harpy grabbed a gull … Read More
Much later, when I was twenty-eight years old, I met up with our childhood friends at a bar in our Connecticut hometown the night before your funeral and they told me that you’d had schizophrenia. I’d driven eleven straight … Read More
dilapidation on the lawn we watch without sorrow; a chair, perhaps is the irretrievable earth appraising, I think, this came from my father’s country where bricks are the color of melancholy, but of course it’s much older … Read More
Your house is a room that follows the sun, changes constantly like light-sensitive glasses. On the hottest days, the carpet retreats and a low vinyl tide creeps in. You jump its little waves. You and the dog roll on … Read More
At the funeral, they sprinkled grains of dirt into my palm, but I saw no point in throwing them into a hole that could never be filled. The only way to get rid of a hole is to remove … Read More
There were, of course, the doctor appointments you accompanied me to, after repeatedly finding blood in my urine—fearing it was a symptom of something worse lying underneath. That is life, after all. Fear of something worse. In the … Read More
here / i am not his image / & i envy it / i shut my eyes against what is left / the crackling softness of life / like communion / desire is a marathon / a baton waiting … Read More