by Gabriella Herkert The world has been a pretty confusing place in the last year. Wars and recession. Weapons of mass destruction and SARS. Pretty much everything after the World Trade Towers fell has seemed big and dark and scary. Now it’s time to elect a President again and in a world with so much [...]
Yearly Archives: 2003
Why I Married My Wife by Robert Levin
by Robert Levin I was, I suppose you could say, in a prepartum depression. It started when my wife, Connie, decided it was time to have a baby. I was thirty-one and she was twenty-eight, a circumstance which, I reminded her in my argument against the idea, was no cause for alarm. But after she’d [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, VII by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer Spiegelwords words words books There’s something about the bar that reminds me of Texas. We arrive in Graskop, a quaint town in the Eastern Transvaal. Little shops and a place to get pancakes are the main attractions. We look at art galleries during the day and go to a bar at night. Inside [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, VI by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer Spiegel mosquito net chocolate Hluhluwe I’m the girl who gets the guy. We fall asleep. His body against mine in a way that suggests an accident in positioning. We arrive at Kruger National Park, the premiere game park in South Africa. The ‘Big Five’ are there: lion, leopard, buffalo, elephant, and rhino. Roughly [...]
Leaving by W. A. Smith
by W. A. Smith Davy Calhoun slipped the driver’s seat back a notch, folded his hands in his lap and stared at the Brigham’s bright white house across the street. The hedge had grown a foot since he saw it last. How come Molly’s dad hadn’t kept it trimmed? The old man must be getting [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, V by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer Spiegelshag fuck Bourke’s Luck I sit between Nick and Ingrid in a Range Rover. Dylan sits with the Swazi game park ranger in front, the Germans are in back, and we’re in the middle. Jens, a quiet man, is wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt and Lena, the self-possessed Botticelli, is wearing one [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, IV by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer SpiegelZachary picks me up from campus to go hiking. Over my office desk, I’ve written the definition of apocalypse: good overcomes evil, often with violence. He stares at it, doesn’t say anything. ‘Did you get food?’ He looks away from my definition. ‘I’m going for the apocalypse now, ‘I say, explaining. ‘No more [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, III by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer Spiegel moss malaria butterscotch Ndbele I wake to the sound of roosters crowing. Outside, chickens peck the ground’jerking their chicken bodies here and there. I’m under a mothy blanket that makes my hair itch. When I reach for my toiletries, my flashlight falls noisily to the floor and I cringe with the clamor. [...]
Nipples Beads Mealie Pap, II by Jennifer Spiegel
by Jennifer Spiegel Tribal tattoo on the small of Zachary’s back. I trace my index finger over its gray edges. Tracing it, claiming it. He sprawls out on our bed, face down, nearly naked. Boxers half-off, arms outstretched. ‘My world is crashing down on me.’ I place my palms flat against his back, pressing firmly. [...]
The Leaning Tower of Ego by Gabriella Herkert
by Gabriella Herkert I’m a lawyer. For those of you who don’t know many lawyers, that pretty much means I get paid by the word. Every multi-syllabic euphemism I can inject into an otherwise casual conversation is directly proportional to the lakeside square-footage residential property I can afford. I have never minded the burdens this [...]