Prose
Open Between Us, by George Looney
If you google George Looney, you’ll be asked if you meant to google George Clooney. I would love to hear George the Actor read poems from George the Poet’s latest collection, Open Between Us. Pre Up in the Air, Clooney wouldn’t have possessed the maturity of tone to carry off this duty. Now he’s ready. …
The Bird Lady
That morning of the owl, I remember taking my time walking home from my grandmother’s hogan. I didn’t want to go home to my dad, is why. He was laid off from the oil fields again. Next to the phone he kept a list. He’d written “Fucking Drilling Companies” across the top of it, most …
Jack
The first time I picked up Jack* for his counseling session, he stomped out of his classroom with his arms swinging, his hands in two tight fists. As he walked down the hall ahead of me, his legs bowed out as if he’d just jumped down from his horse. But this was Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. And …
Home Brew
It suddenly seemed like every man in Daisy’s acquaintance was brewing his own beer. At parties thrown by her girlfriends, husbands served the stuff up in jam jars and made a show of raising their full glasses to observe the filter of the light. Daisy almost never drank the stuff. She hated the smell. Home …
All of Your Messages Have Been Erased, by Vivian Shipley
In April of 2009, Vivian Shipley gave a poetry reading at the Ohio State University at Lima to an unlikely crowd of poetry aficionados. Most of the more than one hundred college and high school students in attendance had probably never read a poem except when coerced. Nevertheless, they were clearly enthralled. Shipley alternated reading …
The Home Jar
Most of the travelers who come through our doors are not at all like Mr. Smith. They are polite, honest, what my night manager calls decent folk, and as thoughtful of others as they can be in the midst of their purposeful lives. Guests do not come to our hotel simply to vacation. We’re not …
Sitting Ducks
He notices the ducks in the charity shop on his way to the hospital. Closing his eyes, he sees them floating on goat’s milk in a marble vat. Their yellowness, warm as sunshine, benign as an egg yolk. “Do they float?” Carl asks the woman behind the counter. “Rubber ducks are made for baths,” she …