Erik received the news of Pappa’s death in the summer of 1979 while he was away teaching philosophy courses at a study abroad program in Paris.

The storm swept up a week’s worth of clouds and binned them far to the east into the sea. Tanya stood in the doorway, surveying her yard. Cool mountain air entered her lungs—though she lived far from any mountain—and the sky was clear and blue.

Picking at the bones,
they feed from residual
ligaments left
post quiet carving

began with disinterest
proceeding to tsks tsks then
disregard

Like a title that keys no theme
Except an atmosphere, I slip into my clothes.
A doorknob, a checklist, a podcast
On an unsolved murder.

Shards of invention over
crisp dirt :: secreted
mouths whisper about
asexual
union and definitions :: small

As a preliminary matter, let me state that I do not believe in “rules” for writing fiction and certainly not for writing works of magic realism. The following essay will provide guidelines and nothing more. I will be describing what I have learned by writing short stories using magic realism and hopefully give you some ideas as to how to do the same.

AT THE BEGINNING OF THE LAST DECADE OF THE 20TH CENTURY, 1600 scientists, including 100 Nobel Laureates, signed a “letter to humanity” which concluded, “We the undersigned, senior members of the world’s scientific community, hereby warn all humanity of what lies ahead. A great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated.”

The two Cristeros were sitting at the Abajeño Cantina in central Guadalajara after having spent several months in the mountains of Jalisco waging war against the military forces of the anticlerical President Plutarco Elías Calles.

The images are part of a larger series created in the Mojave Desert around Joshua Tree in the fall of 2023 that explore the shifting state of the desert.

—Come here. Closer. I know you love a good story, but the thing is…this is a long story…no, it’s not even a story…it’s a complete fugazi!

The Bourbon Restoration had a dark cool ambiance and friendly young servers and was a hit with local professionals. No matter that its name evoked antediluvian attitudes. After a couple of visits, Chuck Sullivan decided it was his favorite place to go after work.

Tom Cuthbert opened his garage door. A light snow topped the denuded branches of his crabapples and lay like a pale gauze over his yard. Winter’s depressing, steely-hued clouds clung tenaciously to the lake and its surroundings, still chafed about the warm air that had broken their hold a few weeks earlier.

reprieve thickening
in threatening
the still winter light
encrusted as a high
gray sky in thickness
turning in another silence
as in the waiting

Now that she is gone – meningitis in a Brazilian convent – perhaps it will be easier to put everything into perspective. Perhaps now I can figure out what I never fully understood while she was alive.

In the final days of the Age of Dwindling Resources, Alejandra Sánchez, as young and fearless as a latter-day Joan of Arc marching to war, led a ragtag procession of nearly two hundred women from their city of Santillana del Mar to the sandbanks of Playa El Sable where they gathered to witness the end of the world.

This series, Chasing Paradise, draws upon my work as a fine artist in painting, as I create stylized photographs of flowers and plants found in my rural environment.

There is an army of ghost trees ringing the coastlines of the world.
Once verdant, evidence of a healthy environment,
now leafless, bleached white in death,
phantoms of the forest that once was.

This will help you to remember
what a forest was. This one, North Temperate.
Might have been where we are standing.
Here, adjust the strap
around your forehead, rest this over
the bridge of your nose. Click the button.
See.

Each corner of a globe
With no corners
Born of the sea as
Liquid or solid
In dances with humans
And dances between humans
Fear and hope meet in their own dance
As the earth cries

We slept at gunpoint but woke up alive, so it was a good night.
For the first time since Bai disappeared, I didn’t dream of monsters. I dreamt I was in my tiny childhood bedroom and my mother was alive and calling me for a pungent dinner I could smell wafting from the kitchen, sweetness and spice.

Captain’s Log: The last stage of our short Kerosene Age is upon us. Stationed here, at the Rainbow Rides Fairgrounds, the end we’ve all been anticipating is now wetting the souls of our feet. Our best estimates place us only a day ahead of the imminent deluge.

Turtle Light and Ocean Sleep are works of multimedia and sculpture mediums, respectively, depicting the natural world with fantastical elements.

There isn’t a hard edge to be found in the hut. Round walls slope into concave ceiling. Amoeba-shaped windows display the world outside: ferns, wavering in steam, and droplets dangling from speckled red toadstools. So vibrant, these exterior views could almost be cinemagraphs, mounted on soft grey walls, inside the climate-controlled seal.

When the rain came, no one in Mossville, Georgia, could have ever imagined the Ohoopee River would spill over its banks and become the reason for so much tribulation. Everyone assumed a brand-new Army Corp of Engineers earthen dam would hold back the river for the next hundred years. But they were wrong.