by Shauna Sweeney It takes fifteen minutes to confirm I’m being followed. At first I had my doubts, kept second-, triple-, quadruple-guessing. I thought fear was playing tricks on me, making monsters out of shadows. But we’ve turned too many corners, switched onto too many new streets for coincidence. The car hasn’t left my taxi’s […]
by Johanna Gohmann One cozy night at home, while enjoying a pizza dinner, I flipped on the television just in time to see a close-up shot of a woman’s labia being “trimmed” by a surgeon. “Look!” I shrieked at my fiancé, involuntarily crossing my legs. “How can they show that on regular TV?!” David glanced […]
by Brege Shinn I awake naked. I’m on my bed but there are no sheets. The pillow case is gone. I scramble to my backpack for something to wear, but there’s not a stitch of clothing to be found. Confused, I look in my travel-mate’s pack, but she too has no clothes. Damn it, I […]
by Pearl Chen “Do you speak English?” the blonde woman asked casually as she plopped right down next to me on a block of concrete outside the bubbly Water Cube on Beijing’s Olympic Green. For such a sprawling, futuristic, Disneyland-esque plaza, it wasn’t exactly overflowing with places to sit, and we were both relieved to […]
by Rick Steigelman At the risk of sounding like a scamp of a child, ungrateful towards the one whose generosity has provided him his first glimpse of London, England, part of my plan going into the trip was to ditch Mom as often as was possible and for periods of time as long as I […]
by Kevin Kaiser Scarlet and I are making out in a bathroom stall in the men’s restroom of a Hollywood eighteen-and-up club. Her fist twists the cityscape image on my red Dismemberment Plan t-shirt, pulls my body close, as I grip the flesh of her hips exposed between the too-small black shirt, the tight black […]
by Diane LeBow “That’s the Hindu Kush Mountains, the killer of Hindus.” An Afghan man sitting next to me on the Ariana Afghan Airlines flight from Dubai to Kabul leaned over and explained. Outside the window, the flat desert lands of Iran and southern Afghanistan suddenly gave way to barren blue and gray ridgebacks, like […]
By Erin Byrne Imagine being placed at the top of the main staircase inside the most visited museum in the world. Daylight streams from above, bathing the arched walls in golden light, illuminating and exposing you. You’re there for thousands to see, but have neither head nor arms. Winged Victory stands boldly atop the sweeping […]
by Nancy Middleton As we boarded the bus outside our hotel in Athens, I took a look at my five students and wondered if we should skip the day trip to Delphi. We had been touring for seven days straightevery morning an early oneand the boys (yes, they were all boys) were visibly exhausted. Much […]
by Kathy Comstock Years ago across France one could set a watch according to the ‘vieille fille’. Dressed in black and with laced shoes supporting a stocky or painfully thin frame, she would secure her front door lock, look right then left, and head off. One withering fist hugging her shawl and the other gripping […]
