by Jennifer Baljko
“Hi. I’m Jennifer - eternal student and citizen of the world.” This is how I’ve started to introduce myself. Maybe it’s presumptuous. And, it sounds silly to say. But, since I am at loss to describe what it is that I do these days, I think this sums it up.
Before - that is, [...]

by Jann Huizenga
“Ne ho travato uno!” crows Signor Battaglia. “I found one!” Six pairs of female eyes turn his way. Signor Battaglia, a Sicilian from Central Casting, stands rooted like the ancient carob behind him, his wooden cane planted firmly on a carpet of capers. His left fist hoists a trophy of wild asparagus. He’s [...]

by Eileen M. Cunniffe
If I hadn’t been spooked by a newspaper headline, I wouldn’t have found myself in an ambulance on Achill Island, off the coast of Ireland. Of course I wouldn’t have met Pat either, and that would be my great misfortune. The bold headline, glimpsed over the shoulder of a fellow [...]

by Dave Mondy
I am trying to go into a strip club but I can’t.
They line both sides of the street here, jammed up close like a chorus line, and each time I get within 5 ft. of a door, I have an episode. My stomach roils, my hands shake — I’m spilling beer all [...]

by Ryan Kearney
It’s my first night out in Cuba and already I’m surrounded by women who want to sell themselves to me. I just don’t know it yet.My friend Christian and I have followed a 39-year-old Danish man to an ornate mansion-cum-nightclub on the suburban outskirts of Havana, and with him are two young Cuban [...]

by Jann Huizenga
“Now I must go move my cows,” says Fabio in Italian. “Do you want to see my farm?” The invitation seems innocent enough, and I readily agree. Certo! In my desultory Sicilian life, there’s nothing I don’t want to see, no frontier to my curiosity.
We fold ourselves into his little yellow bee of [...]

by Kevin McCaughey
Anusha was late to my apartment. She came in soaked, harried. Storms had drenched the north of Poland the last four days, a fine Baltic September. “Oh, God,” she said. She worked herself out of her coat.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“It was cat,” she said. Rain had mashed [...]

by Bill Zarchy
“We’re not even Christian,” wailed Danny as I dragged my family to Chartres on the train from Gare Montparnasse. “Why do we have to go to so many churches?”
For my kids, Europe’s vast, vaulted cathedrals weren’t glorious icons of medieval society, but creepy, dark places full of dead people. Being hecka-old didn’t make [...]

by Dave Mondy
 
 
The men of Miami Beach have fish hooks in their nipples. At least they walk that way. Connected by invisible wire to invisible para-sails far out front, they are pulled down the street chest-first. Bared, bronzed and ballsy, they are as over-pumped as their women are svelte. The women of Miami [...]

by Janet Riehl
A girlhood in rural Illinois wasn’t bad preparation for life in upcountry African nations. “Up country” meant the northern regions innermost from newly built capitol cities. My training as a future African driver began on my family’s farm at four years old⎯old enough to sit on my father’s lap⎯his left leg, to be [...]