Neema Avashia on being Indian, queer, and Appalachian

Jocelyn Nicole Johnson talks about 'My Monticello'

Marianne Worthington discusses 'The Girl Singer'

Battlefield

♦
Spring 2014 ♦
Mid-October, and around the rocks of Devil’s Den legions of cabbage white butterflies march in wild disorder, like scattered clouds of ashes in the late-day light. Under the blank staring eyes of bronze generals we negotiate winding dirt paths among boulders encrusted with shapeless patches like grey-green lace: when I…
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Johnson City

♦
Spring 2014 ♦
Stephen was singing along and tapping his hands on the steering wheel to the Mountain Goats, one of his favorite bands. It was a good day for driving and singing. October blue sky, hills layered with oaks and maples and sweetgums flashing scarlet and gold leaves. We’d left Chapel Hill…
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The Big Chair

♦
Winter 2014 ♦
Joanne stood by her car in the parking lot of Blue Hills Nursing Home and filled her lungs with cold October air. She’d spent the last hour sweet-talking her mother into eating tiny spoonfuls of mashed potatoes and gravy, waxy green beans, and stringy chicken. She took another deep breath…
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The Creek

♦
Winter 2014 ♦
My brother barefoot in its grey thread, in his hands the small fish hooked out, fluttering like a loose paint chip. A jar of crawdads to carry home sat on the bank. We’d watch them for a day until the tiny albino shapes would hang shiftless in the water like…
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Translation

♦
Winter 2014 ♦
for Loyal Jones So I came out of my rainy bower covered with white petals dropped from a tree. My people long ago whose milky eyes I still can see would have said I had a God’s plenty of petals on me, an expression I liked to hear as a…
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