Prose
Something to Marvel At
As Beverly and I walked down the sodden creekside trail, sounds of traffic from Interstate 84 behind us became the sound of Latourell Falls ahead of us. The transition was complete when the creek bent east, opening to a sudden view of the falls. We stopped to watch its 250-foot plunge down the north side …
The Telephone of the Dead
Marnie Gottfried’s husband, Steve, had been dead for two weeks when he called her for the first time. She had just returned from Israel, hadn’t even unpacked, was as unhinged and raw as she would ever be, and the telephone call sent her windmilling to a therapist. When she mentioned the telephone call to the …
Hilda Raz: A Celebration
I recognize some people as much by their lexicon as any other aspect of their personality. Although there are many words distinct to Hilda, “exquisite” is the word I most closely associate with her. It’s Hilda’s expression of highest approval and the word that best describes Hilda herself. She’s a writer of exquisite poetry, a …
The Sea That Leads to All Seas
A month after her boyfriend Mohamed is deported, Larissa agrees to dinner with the dental student. When you are deported from the United States, you are barred from reentry for ten years. In 2013 Larissa will be thirty-five, the age most doctors cite for increased risks in pregnancy. She has decided on one plan for …
Dirt Angels, by Donald Platt
Plato’s late dialogue Parmenides recounts the tale of the elder scholar questioning young Socrates about his early philosophical ideas. Can only the just, beautiful, and good be the stuff of ideas, Parmenides asks, or do abstractions apply also to the vile and paltry such as hair, mud, and dirt? Socrates responded that surely ideas do …
Punishment
She told the police she couldn’t remember anything. From out of the pain and the dim apprehension that she was alive, she shook her head no. Even after she’d been stabilized and the swelling had gone down so that she could see—though her vision was blurred and the iv drip made her mind hover just …
Sardis
Easter Sunday and it’s windy and cold for April in the Deep South. To make matters worse, squall lines have been blowing up from the Gulf all morning, hanging tattered clouds so low and thick they look like the soaked inside of a cotton bale. I’m on a three-day book tour—Memphis, Jackson, and Oxford, Mississippi—for …
Alphabet
“Tomás,” my mother used to tell me, “Tu tienes que hablar por mi.” So I would go with her down to the welfare or some other place, the post office, the bank, the school, and I would be her voice. I could always talk real good, and come to think of it, I could conversate …
From the Interim Senior Editor
This issue marks a moment of transition in the print life of Prairie Schooner. For more than twenty years, Hilda Raz served as Prairie Schooner‘s editor in chief, guiding this journal through times that were sometimes challenging but always exciting and rewarding for all who were associated with it during those years. Hilda’s impact here …