No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story. Celebrating Diversity Since 2015
“Lots of girls get PhD's,” I say, doing my best to act like I’m not impressed, but I never heard of a PhD. Minerva impresses and intimidates me. She’s the first Mexican girl I’ve met who talks about going to a four year college and who knows so much. And she’s cooler than any nerd or stoner I’ve seen. I wonder why she was sitting alone.
It was getting late. They lay in bed, Abe and Lydia, him 68 and watching Bonanza, her 57 and reading the Horoscopes in the back of Entertainment Weekly.
Thursday
From afar Boyd could see it like the patched gray quilt his grandmother used to cover him with, saying, Good night, sleep tight, wake up bright in the morning light, and do what’s right. She must have learned those rhymes before the Wars of Excision, back when doing what was right was a credible notion. Now, as a gray cloud swallowed the hills and palm groves dozens of kilometers east, he didn’t need to remind himself that there was neither right nor wrong anymore. As he triggered his camera’s shutter, hearing it snap over and over, he tried to recall an old proverb, something to the effect that There is nothing either good or bad but Guv’na Brush makes it so—but he soon gave up. The railroad tracks, black lines that covered The Valley’s belly like surgical sutures, were beginning to recede. Whether the cloud had begun with the prevailing westerlies slamming into a cold front east of Mount Marvelous, or whether it had gathered force thanks to some unimaginably humongous fans constructed by the Looters on the shadowy northern slopes of the mountain, it was no still life. Its gritty gusts were approaching, though not as fast as a falcon. There was time to photograph dunes and rocky outcrops being obliterated, time to focus on sand dervishes reconnoitering, scouting out ever-widening swatches of ground. Although he couldn’t hear it, soon, he knew, the deafening whoosh of a prewar freight train highballing directly overhead would block out every sound. Too soon there would be nothing to shoot, nothing breathable, even with a bandana pressed over his mouth.
Chapter from High in the Streets
My whole life I’ve thought myself defective or at least peculiar. As a boy, I could do what the others did—with some effort I managed algebra, chemistry experiments, and reading Conrad. In this way I was not strange. However, there was one thing I simply could not suffer—foreseeing a future for myself, an attainable goal, something to strive for—as all my friends and classmates did. They saw themselves becoming doctors, teachers, engineers, and judges, and planned accordingly. Take this set of courses, get this certification, intern for this many years, keep your head down, work hard, and you’ll reach your aims.
Kansas City, Missouri
Hilary Crown
Johnson hadn’t been home in a week. Instead, he chose to sleep at his apartment on campus, which was fine because I didn’t really want him back anyway. I enjoyed my morning cigarette while standing in a clutch of trees at the edge of our property. The children picked flowers. The town’s tornado siren went off. We were on the far side of the pasture, the house floated on the horizon like a cruise ship, Tom and Victoria grabbed my hands and we started running. Dark skies closed in, the wind swirled, snatching anything not nailed down.
Prologue
The spring before my father came back I sprouted up to five-five in a hurry. The week after finishing seventh grade the growing pains kept me in bed for three days, but by Independence Day Felix and I were at the Mill Creek courts hustling preppy jocks from all over. The net-less rims stained the backboards with streaks of rust and dropped flecks of sun-faded orange paint onto the blacktop with every shot that didn’t slide through on nothing but air. We’d play twos—Felix always driving, driving, and me hanging back for open jumpers. Felix wasn’t subtle about winning. A celebration dance after a particularly demoralizing juke and score wasn’t uncommon. He had an extra tooth above the canine on the left, and when he laughed it pointed straight out as if to indicate the butt of every joke. The losers would stare and shake their heads as Felix salsa-ed, but they never had anything to say about it. Felix and I would head home with paint chips stuck in the sweat at our hairlines, rimming our scalps like crowns.