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Old Habits
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Old Habits

by LAURIE LYNN DRUMMOND
Almost midnight at ToyJoy, a funky, noisy, toy store swathed in twinkly lights and geometric neon in Austin, Texas. Leila, Burke, and I wander the aisles, shuffling sideways past other late-night wanderers and finger glow-in-the-dark armadillos, hula girls with cowboy boots and tattoos, oversized spiders that hiss and spit. Two...
Field Guide to Resisting Temptation
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Field Guide to Resisting Temptation

by SARAH WELLS
Do not send song lyrics to Facebook or post YouTube music videos or listen to any songs about love gone wrong or one-night stands or anything on country music radio. Okay, no music at all. Tell him no more, you are done, you are disappearing, removing him from your phone...
How to Leave a Room
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

How to Leave a Room

by MARCIA ALDRICH
When you leave a room, my mother taught me, leave no trace behind. She trained me to be in a room without making it dirty. And yet, to my confusion, she wore lipstick, applied in a thick style that changed little from year to year, a signature of sorts. In...
Alouicious
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Alouicious

by RANDALL ALBERS
“That, son, is the unluckiest man in the world.” Bill nodded toward the foreman passing down the shop floor for the fiftieth time that day. The summer before starting grad school, I’d landed a factory job where he and I spent all day rolling towering racks of plywood in and...
All-American Dread
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

All-American Dread

by ROBERT VIVIAN
Somewhere out across the roads and highways of America there’s a pair of headlights trying to run and track me down, headlights that know me better than I know myself which will one day light me up and scatter me into a thousand drifting dust motes. I’ve felt them coming...
Sachiel the Tailor
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Sachiel the Tailor

by BRIAN DOYLE
Another time I was talking to Sachiel, the tailor in Boston whose shop on Chauncy Street was essentially a door with a vast and impenetrable space behind it, a wilderness known only to Sachiel, who never moved from his stool by the door during working hours, and we got to...
I Wish I Could Write Like Russell Edson
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

I Wish I Could Write Like Russell Edson

by KIM ADRIAN
I wish I could write like Russell Edson because then I could show my husband standing in the kitchen like a tree that lost its leaves all at once. Or like a rock in the living room that doesn’t notice the lichen. And my daughter would be a bird in...
A Day in the Grammar of Disease
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

A Day in the Grammar of Disease

by SONYA HUBER
If pain is a language, I have the accent on my tongue. I do not yet dream in pain, but a three-year immersion has stripped my skeleton’s previous fluency. Now I am a child in this land without good parking spaces. (10:30) Today my husband and I talked about my...
Interviewing Emily Dickinson
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Interviewing Emily Dickinson

by SHERYL ST. GERMAIN
It’s not that I thought She might really be there, behind the tilting tombstone: Emily Dickinson December 10, 1830 Called Back May 15, 1886, not that I thought touching the stone might make up for something missing in me, some lack I might get back through this pilgrimage—ok, I’m lying—I...
Five from Kyrgyzstan
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Five from Kyrgyzstan

by JIA TOLENTINO
One: At sunrise I’ve packed myself onto a tiny rumbling minibus headed for the capital. Outside the ground is frozen and the sky casts the mountains in pale pink and gold. In the back, a live goat stuffed into a plastic bag bleats gently. It’s Halloween weekend. I’m wearing a...
An Unusual Thing
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

An Unusual Thing

by MELISSA FERRONE
When the roommate called, telling me he’d found an unusual thing, I was in Pittsburgh, buying pumpkins with my boyfriend. He described, to me, the bitter melon: a vegetable, green and wrinkly, like a rotted-through cucumber—its marrow filled with bright red seeds. The roommate speaks six languages and enjoys spending...
Strong Men
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Strong Men

by HOPE EDELMAN
The men: craggy and weathered, in rumpled flannel shirts and work pants, arms crossed tight in the static haze of unfiltered cigarette smoke. These were East Tennessee men, loud and back-slapping, teeth stained tobacco gold. Sometimes they spit brown bullets into Styrofoam cups. Often, they cried. They were stunning. I...
The Laws of Physics and Good Common Sense
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

The Laws of Physics and Good Common Sense

by DAVID J. LAWRENCE
A half dozen officers gathered to swap stories in the tent that housed the one hundred or so military personnel headed to Bagram Air Field, Afghanistan. The six of us had met just forty-eight hours earlier outside the gate area at Baltimore Washington International—our country’s main portal to violence. Our...
Cheekbones
Current Issue / Issue 43 / May 2013 / Nonfiction

Cheekbones

by PATRICIA PARK
A beautiful woman once told me she thought she’d do well here, in America, since no one back there appreciated her strong, distinct features. This woman had deep-set eyes, high cheekbones, and a pronounced jaw; she looked like a younger version of my mother, right down to the over steamed...
Latest Issue
Issue 43, May 2013

Issue 43, May 2013

May 15, 2013
Issue 43 features sharp, challenging new work from Hope Edelman, Brian Doyle, Marcia Aldrich, Sarah Wells, Laurie Lynn Drummond, Robert Vivian, David J. Lawrence, Sonya Huber, Sheryl St. Germain, Randall Albers, Cheryl Diane Kidder, Kim Adrian, Melissa Ferrone, Jia Tolentino, & Patricia Park.
Craft Essays

Craft Essays

May 14, 2013
In our Craft section, Barrie Jean Borich explores the connection between body and memory, Jill Talbot’s CNF class interviews Brian Oliu, and Bryan Furuness and some writer friends discuss ‘What to Do When Facing Deep Writerly Despair.’
Book Reviews

Book Reviews

May 14, 2013
Our Book section features reviews of Lia Purpura’s Rough Likeness,  Peter Trachtenberg’s Another Insane Devotion, and Tracy Kidder and Dick Todd’s Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction.
Blog Post: Of Spinning and Writing

Blog Post: Of Spinning and Writing

February 1, 2012
Last month in my 6 a.m. spinning class, sweating up an imaginary hill on my stationary bike—rap music thumping, my frighteningly enthusiastic instructor whooping encouragement—I realized, as disciplined as I believe I am, there was no way I’d be there that time of day, working that hard, if I didn’t have a class to attend....

 

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