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We're driving through South Dakota when I see the tall grass on the side of the road turn liquid. Then the plains come alive: They breathe and relax, breathe and relax. We could be in a boat on a golden ocean for all the dipping and swaying. After a while, the horizon flickers and sends up a filmy light. The air itself is viscous, moved by wind, distorting the landscape.
—From "The Lightning in My Eyes," an essay by Jean Hanson, from So Much More Than a Headache: Understanding Migraine through Literature (The Kent State University Press, 2020), a collection edited by Kathleen J. O'Shea. This essay appeared on pages 30-35.
After a supper of roasted lamb and eggplant,
fish baked with tahini and lemon,
Mother offers everyone demitasse.
She places the small gold cups
just so on the Quaker lace.
—From "The World Is a Wedding," a poem by Adele Ne Jame, from The Poetry of Arab Women (Interlink Books, 2001), a collection edited by Nathalie Handal. This poem appeared on pages 241-242. "The World Is a Wedding" was originally published in a collection of Adele Ne Jame's poetry, Field Work (Petronium Press, 1996).
On January 19, 2014, my grandfather Bill walked into my grandmother Frances's hospital room with a loaded gun he'd purchased that morning. He set their Neptune Society cards side by side on a nearby table and kissed his sleeping wife of sixty-three years. Then he shot her once in a the chest. He tried to shoot himself, too, but a spring popped from the pawn shop gun and the weapon broke apart in his hands. . . .
See, two weeks before my grandfather bought the gun, my grandmother tripped as she walked across their living room. It was a swift accident on an ordinary day . . .
—From Dear Damage, a collection of essays by Ashley Marie Farmer (Sarabande Books, 2022). These two segments appear on pages 3 and 6 and are from the first essay, "Mercy."
I held his hand until the ambulance arrived. It was the first time that I had held a man's hand since my husband died. The rectangular diamond on Mr. Swaminathan's gold ring was hard and cold in contrast to his warm skin. Before they loaded his body onto the gurney, he opened his eyes, looked at me, and said, "Renuka." Then he squeezed my hand. Whether he was asking me to summon his wife, or whether he thought I was his wife, I cannot say. He died before he reached the hospital. He was seventy-five years old, the same age my husband would be if he were alive today.
—From Seeking Fortune Elsewhere, a collection of short stories by Sindya Bhanoo (Catapult, 2022). This section is from the first story, "Malliga Homes," which was first published in Granta. It was the winner of the Disquiet Prize for Fiction 2020 and was selected by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for an O. Henry Prize.
I was at the college for an author talk on a novel based on local history. A few dozen people attended and most of us headed afterward to a refreshment table loaded with desserts prepared by students in the culinary school. I put slices of pound cake and chocolate cake on a paper plate and I stood at a small table that supported my cup of water as I ate. If the cake hadn't looked so delicious I'd have bolted after the writer's last word because I'd seen Mr. and Mrs. Y in the audience and feared she'd buttonhole me. Mrs. Y and I were former colleagues and we hadn't seen each other in almost a year.
—From "Buttonhole," a story by Glen Pourciau, New World Writing Quarterly (October 5, 2022).