mélange

  1. Home
  3. mélange
    4. (Page 9)

Seeing Eye Dog

Ellen Kirvin Dudis   We all—from fear of a dark which denies sympathy to a blind person’s first presence in our eyes— feel for the dog. It is unrehearsed. He sinks to the wet subway floor, in pools where the points of streaming umbrellas have given up duels with the rain. A speaker will tell…

Death in a Fig

Peter Streckfus   1. We’ll eat figs, black ones, dried while it rains outside, while it rains through the doors and windows There will be very little speaking during the meal mostly tasting and forks clinking, footsteps going from the table to the kitchen for more. We’ll say “wasps” And when there’s some rice on…

The Carpenter

Peter Streckfus   The peacock is so extravagant His cry so open His form so forgiven God, what else could a man or woman            want than to be the blessed inhabitant Of such a body. To have milled the boards               for its housing.…

When Ronald Reagan Was a Boy

Issue 29.2 Fall 2000 Peter Streckfus   He found an abandoned motorcycle and brought it home. He tenderly rebuilt the engine with the help of Mr. Mertz, the old German bachelor who lived a mile down the way. In a month, it ran. Ron rode it to town as often as his parents would allow.…

2016 Pushcart Prize Nominations

2016 Pushcart Prize We are pleased to announce our 2016 Pushcart Prize nominations! Fiction Nominees Siamak Vossoughi, “The Lie and the Truth”  Miranda Schmidt, “Undergrowth”    Poetry Nominees Christopher Citro, “The Hay Out There and the Hay in You” Rochelle Hurt, “Kaleidoscope”   Nonfiction Nominees Anna Potter, “The Body in Motion” Annie Sheppard, “More of a Bowerbird”

Book Review: Imagine Not Drowning

Imagine Not Drowning by Kelli Allen C&R Press January 2017 978-1-936196-68-5 “Hands,” “mouth,” “time,” “body.” “Fingers, skin, story, touch.” “Come close.” “Know me.” These words appear most frequently in Kelli Allen’s Imagine Not Drowning. They quickly assert the book’s concerns. See me watching you. Listen to me speak. Help me make this shared experience meaningful. And…

Latest Left

Arielle Greenberg   In your wake, coffee grinds. Something black & oily inside a crank- box; something bean.  A germ. Germanic:  a rule book (“you don’t know what you’re like!”), a ruler. Cracked.  Germane:  the fear you left by the washer & dryer.  The pair of socks balled in my drawer.  (Last night, my panties…

In an S Chair/common book

In an S Chair/common book                                                              for Rob Arielle Greenberg Chapter 1 before we were quite in love one day you described a particular peculiar velvet…

The Place

Edward P. Jones   The moment she got word that they had gone, that it was safe to go up to the place and be with him, she set out. Mosell Cummings, who had lived near the place all his days and who had watched as they sauntered home, murmuring, had brought word to her…

Obesity

Jeff Baker   Long rain, the air unwieldy with worm-must, spring mush, apple- simmerings, a fishlip of moon waxing black, one star raveling its wick-light down to the flood-line, varicose gutters’ currents of offal— crushed butts, san-salt, leaf decay— dawn breaking through the tree line, robins like blood-stars scared up, branches finned, or seal-handed with…