"We still do not understand most of it and we rely on your Uncle Benji to explain sometimes. He says there is nothing happening now that did not happen when he was there as a student. I cannot imagine what it feels like being so young and finding yourself in a place where you are suddenly black before anything else. Especially in a place where it is the worst thing you can be."
Read moreSAM IKEHARA: Weaving
"It’s 9:57 at night and the highway, unpopulated, seems as though it will never end, but end it must—United Airlines is waiting for me. Two sleeping pills later it’s like this: I’m here and here is the city. Unlike home, there are bridges here, from Covent Garden to Waterloo, from St. Paul’s to Tate, from station to station, from she and I, between Anna and I—mind the gap."
Read moreSPENCER YIM KEALAMAKIA: Kipuka
"Plenty times before, Pastor Cooke had surfaced from deep sleep to find he was stuck inside himself. On those mornings it was normal to wake with heat and tightness in the chest, and like a shifting under the skin––just like organs rubbing, grinding, maybe. Sometimes he’d panic."
Read moreANGELA NISHIMOTO: Road-Kill
"Herb drives a 17-year-old white Chevy van. The vehicle he owned before this one was also an old white van, and he’d liked it—the first one—though a friend used to call it Herb’s Rape-Mobile. Herb actually got his first van in Ohio because of the Chevy Van song of the 1970s."
Read moreSAM GRIDLEY: The Genuine Article
Artwork: Rebecca Pyle, Hills beside Highway, below Los Alamos, oil on canvas, 16 x 20, 2014
"It’s his common name, he suspects, that keeps him camouflaged. According to Wikipedia, “Chris Carter” could be a screenwriter, a synthesizer player, a honcho in the music biz, a politician in New Zealand or one of numerous sports figures—his favorite being the slugger who led the American League in strikeouts with 212, a heroic number of misses."
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