“Has a president ever shared his dreams with the public before? Can I be the first?” By Sarah Braunstein
Fiction
Grace: An Excerpt from PANORAMA CITY
“I kept having realizations, and then when I tried to remember them, or recall them, in words, I mean, I couldn’t seem to put them back together.” By Antoine Wilson
Dead Dad’s Club: An Excerpt from BIG RAY
“Toward the end of the visiting hours, a woman who nobody seemed to know walked into the memorial service. She looked at me and said, You must be his son. She said, He left his mark on you.” By Michael Kimball
We Once Possessed the World
“‘You’re gonna make our kitten radioactive,’ I said. She didn’t look at me. We called our baby a kitten because Cate said when the baby kicked it felt like a kitten kneading its claws on Cate’s insides.” By Cote Smith
The Lotus Keeper: An Excerpt
An excerpt from a novel of sex trafficking and justice in Southeast Asia, by K. R. Dial, advocate of the International Justice Mission.
Smoke in Your Eye
What I felt for her wasn’t love. It was more an addiction.
Walter
“What did it mean to be a person in this world?” 3-year-old Walter asks himself somewhere in his subconscious in this weekend’s brilliant story by Sarah Tourjee. Isn’t that the question we’re all asking? As a parent, and as a person, this story seemed necessary to me, in its struggle to figure out what one’s place…
An Excerpt from THE COLLECTIVE, By Don Lee
“A yellow dipper, a paddy melt, a Chiquita muncher. California slang for white chicks who want a taste of Asian.” By Don Lee
Mulberry, The Final Scenes of Act One
The final installment of Act One in James Olm’s “Mulberry.”
One Pirate Year
“My father leaned his head against the fence, the bleachers of Forbes casting a cold shadow over the two of us, and he began to weep in earnest.” By James Scott
The Mulberry, Act 1, Scenes 4 and 5
James Olm brings us scenes Four and Five of Act One of “Mulberry.”
An Excerpt from THE MERE WEIGHT OF WORDS
When Meredith initially hears that her estranged father has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, she says nothing. When Eliot, a long-time friend of her father’s, calls and asks her to see him, she hangs up. But once she runs out of ways to say no, Mere agrees to visit, reasoning that he’ll soon lose all memory of their estrangement.
Mulberry, Scenes 2 and 3
James Olm continues his story about Thomas, Bean, and the mulberry tree. Where will scene 2 take us?
Mulberry
The setting: a small farm in Wisconsin, 1965. The story: family, memories, brothers. James Olm brings us the first scene of his play, “Mulberry.”
Joru’s Hand
“My brother Joru lost his hand. Lost is the wrong word. We still know exactly where it is, at least for now.” By Kevin Fanning
Drive Through
Thaddeus Howze offers us the food order of the future, a grimly satirical take on the meat-processing industry.