October 2017 | nonfiction
I first met him when we were high school freshman. I liked the coltish limbyness of him, his pretend exasperation with the things I said. I knew he liked me too.
A decade later he called me because his mother was dying. He took me to lunch. I wondered if he could tell I still felt the same.
He asked me to visit so I brought a photo of him and me from high school to show his mother, proof I had the right to be there. She smiled from where she lay and said, “You’ve always been a good friend to him.” Even at that moment I wished for more.
I next saw him at the funeral, several hundred people there to honor her life. His brothers and sisters quaking in the pews, the father sitting off to the side by himself, looking like he was filled inside only with air. How those tall brothers carried their mother’s body in its box on their shoulders, stepping carefully, trying not to fold under the weight.
Later, on the train back to the city by myself, I kept thinking about my friend’s funeral suit; the stain on it I saw when he waved me goodbye. I knew we wouldn’t see each other again.
Ronit Feinglass Plank
Ronit’s work has appeared in The American Literary Review, Salon, Best New Writing 2015, Proximity, and The Iowa Review (runner up, The 2013 Iowa Review Award for Fiction), among others. She earned her MFA in nonfiction at Pacific University and is currently working on a memoir. More about her and links to her work are at www.ronitfeinglassplank.com.
July 2017 | nonfiction
The meme was first expressed on May 28th, 2016, and demonstrated a remarkable and rapid evolution in only a few short weeks. In the final months of the year the meme’s proliferation and dispersal slowed considerably, as other sensational events captured the internet’s fleeting attention span, but experts predict Harambe may go on replicating itself virtually forever.
After the gorilla was shot, zookeepers hurried to the body, made an incision in the scrotum, and extracted sperm that is now being kept in a so-called “frozen zoo.” The zoo’s director said in a press conference: “There’s a future. It’s not the end of his gene pool.”
Thomas Wharton
Thomas Wharton lives in the woods somewhere in Canada and writes fiction and non-fiction. His work has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, Japan, and other countries.
April 2017 | nonfiction
The setting is in and around Harvard Law School, 1973. It’s a Sunday afternoon. Although I should be spending my time working on my law review article, I sit in the library writing a note on reasons for ending my life. Phil, my editor, is near me in Langdell Hall. I finish my note and show it to him. After he reads it, he walks off quickly, a worried look on his face. I sit with a heavy law reporter in front of me, reading a case that might or might not have to do with civil commitment of the mentally ill.
Later, Barry, the president of the Harvard Law Review, Phil, and Faith, a fellow editor to whom I’m mildly attracted, invite me to join them for dinner at a cheap restaurant. We order beer and drink. We order food and eat. We talk about nothing important. No one mentions suicide.
Then, as if on signal, my friends become oddly quiet. After a few seconds, Faith announces out of the blue that she’s getting married the next morning to a man she doesn’t love, a spur of the moment thing.
A beat.
Then she turns to me – putting her hand on my arm – and says, “Well, look, if you don’t kill yourself, I won’t get married. Deal?”
We trade promises and finish our dinners.
Bruce Berger
Bruce J. Berger is an MFA candidate at American University in Washington, DC. His work appears in Wilderness House Literary Review, Prole, Jersey Devil Press Anthology, Black Magnolias, and a variety of other literary journals.
April 2017 | nonfiction
I strut into Sephora—a large makeup store—“just to look” and come out with lipstick: matte mauve, glittering nude, a glossy green, daring, my mother claiming it makes me look ill, zombified, ridiculous. But I felt powerful, rebellious, a different me. I attribute her reaction to how the green lipstick looks compared to my Caucasian complexion that my friend Karl refers to as “pasty,” but I prefer “porcelain.”
My favorite gems in Sephora: eyeshadows and liners. Black liquid liner—if not the precise balance of pigment and liquid, will look like sticky roadside tar. It will stick to my lids and smear across the folds and creases, where eyeshadow hides after a sweaty dance. It disappears from the exact sweep I place it in the morning and by the afternoon, “sprite green” accented with “tiramisu” and “soiree” runs off to makeup heaven with one accidental rub of my eyes about 2 in the afternoon in class. Afterwards I walk with my boyfriend Alex who cannot decide whether or not my eyes are green or hazel, maybe jade or emerald with a hint of amber, or just somewhere to get lost.
Gretchen Gales
Gretchen Gales is managing editor and a staff writer for Quail Bell Magazine. She was recently honored in Her Campus’ “How She Got There” segment. Her work has also appeared in Yes Poetry, East Jasmine Review, Yellow Chair Review, and more.
January 2017 | nonfiction
Because he tapped me on my shoulder in the PC Bang and said, Do you want to go to ping pong room tomorrow? Because in the ping pong room we talked over instant coffee, and played Beatles music together. Because he asked, Do you want to go to Amen Church with me? And because I said yes and I sat with him in the chapel pews with his Korean-English bible, reciting Korean. Because he introduced me to his friends, culture, and way of life. Because he gave me hope on Sundays when I was alone. Because one night he said, Duck, let’s eat, and I said yes because I never had duck in another country, or soju to wash it down with. Because he slapped my back when a bone was caught in my throat and we watched it fling in front of us like a slingshot. Because we couldn’t stop laughing about that. Because he showed me pictures of his son and daughter who are married and have their own families in Seoul. Because he’s a proud father and he inspired me to be like him, except perhaps with a little less of the late-night gambling, soju, and cigarettes at the PC Bang. Because I hugged him before I left South Korea. And, because it’s hard to hug people these days.
Spencer Shaak
Spencer Shaak is a MFA Graduate from Rosemont College who taught English as a second language in an elementary school in South Korea in 2015. He misses the kids he taught there. He made many great friends there; one of them, a man named Shim much older than he, is the person spoken about in this piece.
October 2016 | nonfiction
My father’s house burned down during my first confession. Dad had a hangover and dropped me off at Saint Patrick’s while he and my brother Jeb went to a local diner for coffee and eggs. I spent a few excruciating few minutes in the confessional in which I denied having any sins. Then I sat on the church steps reviewing the transgressions the priest had assigned me (Have you ever deceived your mother or your father?) and watching a huge cloud of smoke rise beyond the A&P.
“Probably someone in the trailer park fell asleep with a cigarette going,” Dad said as I climbed in his yellow Ford Pinto. My father was obsessed with fire. He inspected the crumb traps of toasters and told cautionary tales of doomed Christmas lights. He lived in the guest cottage, but was forever showing up at our house to unplug appliances and monitor my mother’s overflowing ashtrays.
We passed the cornfields and the mucky llama farm. The closer we came to home, the more silent we became. The fire was not on Christmas Tree Lane. The trailer park seemed empty and deserted.
“Jesus Christ!” my father cried as we rounded the corner, “it’s my place!”
“I’m glad I was at the diner with him so he couldn’t blame this on me,” Jeb said later as we dug through a pile of charred country music records.
My mother and my oldest brother Joey arrived home with groceries. Joey found the fire hilarious, his stock reaction to most of my father’s misfortunes. My mother, who played the organ for a rival church, looked for answers in the blackened sky.
Jocelyn Heaney
Jocelyn is a Los Angeles-based writer and teacher. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Hippocampus, Talking Writing and elsewhere.
