Excerpts
From Issue 24: "There Is Smoke in Brooklyn" by Shannon Huffman Polson (Nonfiction)
Washington state, fire evacuation levels:
Level 1: get ready
Level 2: get set, and
Level 3: go.
All of us have “go bags” to grab as we run out the door, filled with what matters most for immediate survival. Evacuation levels can and do change on a dime, sometimes in the middle of the night. We drive away from our home perched on the hill above a gentle curve of valley just ahead of receiving notice of Level 3. I do not permit myself a glance back.
From Issue 20: "Solo" by Ryan Brod (Flash Nonfiction)
From Issue 14: "Court of Common Pleas," by Dionne Custer Edwards
From Issue 16: "After the Ball," by Max King Cap
When asked which apparatus he would prefer, he answered, “Truck.” His father had been on a truck. He had been a tillerman on the hook-and-ladder. When two fire apparatuses collided during a run, his father became pinned under the wheels of the engine. He spent nearly a year in recuperation. Ever after he carried tire marks across his chest and shoulder. The candidate began his training on Truck 66 in Uptown.
From Issue 17: "A Complete Game," by Mara Fein
My dad eats peanuts, leisurely drops the shells to the ground, and teaches me how to keep score. Different fans score differently, he says. The important thing is the ability to look back and understand what happened.
From Issue 17: "Omorimachi," by Vaughn M. Watson
From Issue 16: "Both Sides," by Nadia Shahbaz
It was a logic I could easily ingest because it’s the logic of my identity. I’m half-Afghan, half-Italian—and American. Half-inserted, half-outside of two dense, sagging bubbles, floating in an open sky.
From Issue 13: "Wheels" by Richard Hoffman (Nonfiction)
From Issue 13: Richard Hoffman's "Wheels"
Listed in Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2018, as selected by Robert Atwan in Best American Essays 2019.
We slot our bikes into the rack and hang our helmets on the handlebars. The café is crowded and there’s a line to the counter. At a table nearby, a teenage boy in a wheelchair is being fed through a straw by a woman who looks to be his mother. I recognize the round face, the narrow shoulders, the lolling head of someone with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the disease that killed my brothers ...