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Anything But Ordinary

In Issue 91, January 2025 by Marianne Dalton

My car twists and curves as the city lights disappear behind me and my headlights spool deep into the dark abyss toward my rural home. I feel relieved I don’t have to face Dad tonight. I’m waiting until morning to break the news of Mom’s death to him.

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The Nicotine Solution

In Issues Archive, Issue 90, December 2024 by Carsten ten Brink

We were already deep in the Amazonian rainforest, in the borderland between Peru and Brazil, based in a camp somewhere along an unnamed tributary of another tributary of the Rio Javari that marks the border, and that morning we rose early to travel by canoe yet deeper into the forest. Local hunter Alejandro had encountered a large adult anaconda and was willing to take us there.

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Convents, cults and longing

In Issues Archive, Issue 90, December 2024 by Toni Palombi

After 24 years of being a nun, Juliette (name changed) left the convent. It was 1986. Juliette’s spiritual longing – unsatiated by the convent – was as strong as ever. So three years later, when she met Brendan, a charming, charismatic, striking man who ran spiritual workshops drawing on the wisdom of the world’s greatest traditions, she took notice.

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Pen Sketch

In Issues Archive, Issue 90, December 2024 by Grace Halden

It took me three years to read your letter. Back in 2018, when I didn’t really understand the process, I thought ‘pen sketch’ meant an artist’s drawing of the sperm donor. I didn’t look at it as I didn’t want to see you. Not then. I didn’t want to choose a donor based on looks and I didn’t want to identify a stranger on the faces of my prospective children. Later, when I joined groups for donor assisted families, I discovered – by chance when reading a Facebook post – that the so called ‘pen sketch’ was not a picture, it was a letter.

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Pandemic Dog

In Issues Archive, Issue 89, November 2024 by Mark Hall

When Tibby arrived on her first night with us, we let her out into the fenced backyard. On the steps, she paused for an instant, ears up, nose twitching, poised like an Olympic sprinter in the starting blocks. In the twilight, something caught her eye. Slowly, she stalked, like a panther, into the grass. Then she dashed, disappearing under the arborvitae. In a moment, Tibby emerged, triumphant, shaking a small rabbit between her jaws.

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Eileen

In Issues Archive, Issue 87, September 2024 by Alicia McGill

I loved my babysitter, Eileen. She ran cross-country track and strutted around bare legged in a varsity warm-up jacket. Her name was emblazoned in gold letters on the back, and there was a sneaker with wings on the sleeve.

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What Happens?

In Issues Archive, Issue 87, September 2024 by Jeff Hennelly

“What happens after we die?” is a question that has intrigued humanity for millenniums and is perhaps the greatest enigma of all time. Of the estimated 118 billion humans that have died, zero returned with conclusive proof of an afterlife.

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Death and Surviving

In Issues Archive, Issue 87, September 2024 by Andrew Sarewitz

When I was in my late teens, seven of my father’s male friends died within a year and a half. Not husbands of my mother’s women friends. These were men my father knew independent of Mom. I don’t remember him outwardly showing emotion though I’m sure he was, at the very least, sad.

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Coming Into the Country

In Issues Archive, Issue 86, August 2024 by Kirk Astroth

Well before dawn at 4:30 a.m., Chrysti and I met at the Humane Borders truck yard, loaded our gear for the day into the water truck, checked the tires, gas gauge and water tank levels, climbed into the truck and headed out to US 286 toward the border. We had the roads pretty much to ourselves.

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The Visiting Committee

In Issues Archive, Issue 86, August 2024 by Maggie McCombs

The first day, early morning

I wake up to lights in my face again. Right in my eyes, beaming back through a crack in my head. This is at least the eighteenth time they’ve come by in one night. I’m counting them like sheep to pass the time as they cycle in, their voices changing every couple hours.

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Facing Mortality with the Discipline of Healing and Along the Healing Arc

In Issues Archive, Issue 86, August 2024 by Michael McQuillan

Windshield shatters as a spider web rendition that augurs worse to come. A transforming moment, mind informs, a new normal launches now. “Damage report, Mr. Spock,” fills ears from St. Louis freshman memories of Star Trek when a ten-inch TV box peeked through dorm desk detritus to instill space flight fantasies beside what lectures handed down of conniving bishops and their kings.

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What My Mother Left Me

In Issues Archive, Issue 86, August 2024 by Molly Seale

He gazes at me large-eyed as I flip through the album pages of the tinged-with-age black-and-white photographs. I hoist him over my shoulder, pat his back gently for a burp and continue to peruse images of myself—baby me cradled in my father’s arms as I now cradle my son, three-year old me uncomfortably groomed and garbed for a birthday party…

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On the Edge of My Mother Tongue

In Issues Archive, Issue 85, July 2024 by Dominique Margolis

There is space on the edge of language where it is quiet but far from empty. It is the space where life is at it should be. I happened upon it by chance one summer between my first and second year of legal existence while scratching at the wall next to my crib on the first floor of the Au Style Modern’ tailoring shop in the village of Tauves in the Auvergne region of France.

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The Merriest Widow

In Issues Archive, Issue 85, July 2024 by David Kennedy

A rider was drawing closer, through the light fog rising from the forested hills around Stockton. The ladies had initially considered the pursuer as merely another gallivant taking some exercise, but the man on the horse was taking no leisurely route, rather a direct line toward their carriage.
“Have no fear,” said the coachman. “I am a tolerable shot at a hundred feet.”

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Texting with a Ghost

In Issues Archive, Issue 85, July 2024 by Trelaine Ito

“Can we talk?”
He sounds almost too forceful in his delivery, the tone of his voice transforming his question into an attack, so he selects his next set of words deliberately, knowing he’d only have one shot at his opening.

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A Traveling Cloud

In Issues Archive, Issue 85, July 2024 by Begonya Plaza-Rosenbluth

After spending a year in Northern Spain with my father’s sister’s family, I reunited with my parents and siblings in Bogotá, Colombia, instead of our home in Los Angeles, California. My parents were starting over again from scratch and setting up shop to establish themselves. Mom, who was a perpetual optimist, had recently hit the jackpot, and with an endless display of excitement she was paying-off debts, shopping for new home furniture, and preparing for my milestone birthday celebration.

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Tai Po

In Issues Archive, Issue 84, June 2024 by Priscilla Chan

I lose myself in Taiwan. That’s why I hate going there, feeling like a deer in the headlights; perhaps this time the buzzing crowds, alien sounds of chitter-chatter, and layered characters on never-ending menus will feel more like home. It doesn’t.

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I Don’t Care If I’m Real

In Issues Archive, Issue 84, June 2024 by Andrew Park

Sitting in front of the murky Han River, I don’t even see my own reflections. I hear remnants of life here and there: a group of senior joggers, a street saxophonist whose confidence is admirable, and a little girl screaming at something—kids always seem to see another dimension we don’t.

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A Rainbow Day

In Issues Archive, Issue 84, June 2024 by Marianne Dalton

I could not sleep at all last night. My mind was in an unending hyper-focus mode. It’s like those songs that have the algorithm that deliberately make it so you can’t get them out of your head. Mind worms. Plus, I kept thinking about the blood.