Narrative RSS Feed

Cartoon Art Volume 2009-10

Various Artists — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:57:02 -0800

Cartoon Art Volume 2009-09

Various Artists — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:56:01 -0800

Cartoon Art Volume 2009-08

Various Artists — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 16:55:11 -0800

Second Anniversary

Meghan Dunn — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:59:08 -0800

Today, June 10, is the day for all who loved you
to gather in the park and raise money in your name.

Somewhere in town, a boy who matches
your description plays guitar and doesn’t care

Five Poems

Jean Valentine — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 23:00:18 -0800

The Treeless Hill

The treeless hill that gave holes
in its dirt cliff to the swallows
in the long wet light of June, the open
cliff by the road that gave
them nests, your cold wet sweater,
sweater you were born in, softer then,
like any swallow

Depth of Field

Christa Hillstrom — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:12:54 -0800

If I define my neighbor as the one I must go out to look for, on the highways and byways, in the factories and slums, on the farms and in the mines—then my world changes.

—Gustavo Gutiérrez

October. In Yamuna Bazaar.

I wanted to find out about the nature of goodness. What it means. What it changes. What it’s worth. Why it matters. So, with money awarded to a glossy grant proposal, I flew away from those warm-colored autumn Minnesota tree lines toward Delhi. I bruised my arms with immunizations for what I imagined to be exotic diseases. I did a practice walk around the block with a backpack of microphones and cameras and equipment I later realized was frivolous. I convinced my best friend, Susan, to go with me to haul my tripod around, when what I really needed was her presence.

In my mind I projected reels of poignant images of poverty and pathos and India and pain. I imagined the almost mythical ashram and its downtrodden inhabitants. The Mother Teresa–like work performed there—cradling the destitute in welcoming arms. Giving them community, purpose, and space. I had already planned how the story would end. What the tapes would reveal. What the poor would cry out from the depths of their hearts.

Smoke Jumpers

Greg Brown — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:12:15 -0800

Blackfoot wasn’t much of a place: a little high-country town with a school and a railroad history and a radio station up in the hills where there was plenty of land for a signal tower. People came to trap and fish and hunt around the Snake and Portneuf rivers. Others passed through, heading to Wyoming or Montana. But that summer, the summer of the fires, my brother was home on leave, and that was something, at least.

The house we lived in then, and had moved into years earlier, after our father left, was a little ranch with chipping paint and a front porch of half-rotted boards. Crabgrass came up all around the foundation. A rusty fence circled a clothesline and a barren backyard looking out on the mountains. And while it was a place to live, it never felt like anything more, and I understood why Jer bolted after graduating and joined the air force. One afternoon we were smoking cigarettes in the living room when the phone rang.

The Blessing

Montana Ray — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 07:11:27 -0800

It was practical to share a ride home with Saad; we lived close enough, and Saad didn’t have enough money to get himself even halfway back. His silence made me nervous, and I pressed myself against the other side of the backseat and looked out the window. In this district, no electricity on Wednesdays, we were surrounded by blackness; an occasional cloud of red dust billowed in the headlights. The back of a woman appeared, patterned fruit in bold colors and a basin of corn on her head. I craned my neck to examine her fingerprint face before she receded again into darkness.

“My Maria,” Saad sighed and pinched my cheek. Smiling, I turned to him, even though Maria was his mother’s name, and Marie was mine, and vowels were important to me. The special hire sputtered uphill, but with Saad next to me the jerking seemed funny and safe. Had David left me with him at Rip’s studio as some kind of test?

Three Poems

James Richardson — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 08:29:26 -0800

Echo

And since she could only say back what she heard,
she had to listen for what she needed to say.
She haunted the edges of school yards first. Not it.
Lover’s lanes: hopeless. Cell phones seemed promising,
but really. She started reading novels
to put herself in the way of secret lives. It was the old story,
speed that was made to be followed, not repeated:
she remembered the ends of sentences, of sentences.

Three Stories

Pia Z. Ehrhardt — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 07:27:12 -0800

On the heels of winning the 2005 Narrative Prize for her story “Famous Fathers,” at our New York City Narrative Night Pia read stories that skirt the turbulent landscape of human emotion. The quiet restraint Pia reveals in her storytelling is not unlike the levees in New Orleans, where she lives, holding back but ultimately releasing a transformative power.

VIDEO

“Ambulance; Smoking in the House; IHOP” (18:36)

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Arthur Arellano

Viet Thanh Nguyen — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:43:47 -0800

Of the many unexpected things that had happened to Arthur Arellano, the transformation of his modest garage into a warehouse, stacked with boxes upon cardboard boxes of counterfeit goods, was far from the most surprising. Written on the boxes were names like Chanel, Versace, and Givenchy, designers of luxuries far beyond the reach of Arthur and his wife, Norma. Their presence made Arthur uneasy, and so it was that in the week after Louis Vu delivered this unforeseen wealth to the Arellanos, Arthur often found himself slipping out of his rented house at odd hours, stealing down the pebbly driveway past his Chevy Nova, and opening the creaky garage door to ponder the goods with which he was now living so intimately.

The Choir

Olga Broumas — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:44:13 -0800

I walk and I rest while the eyes of my dead
look through my own, inaudible
hosannas greet
the panorama charged serene
and almost ultraviolet with so much witness.
Holy the sea, the palpitating membrane
divided into dazzling fields and whaledark by the sun.

The Escape Artist, Chapter 3

Joanna Walsh — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:52:27 -0800

The best-laid plans of our struggling heroine go awry as an old acquaintance thrusts himself back into the spotlight. Chapter 1 can still be found here, if you are just joining in.

Trust

Paula McLain — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:12:35 -0700

The Happy Ending was a dive bar out in the desert that had no address and no signage. Basically, you could go there only if you’d been there before. The logic of this appealed to me for some reason, and so I agreed to go with my friend Kendall after work one night, though an hour into our driving around finding nothing but vast stretches of desert that looked perfect for burying a body or two, I asked Kendall if she was sure she could find her way back to the place.

“I have a perfect sense of direction,” Kendall said, arrowing her Mazda into an empty cul-de-sac where, for a split second, her headlights illuminated the silver-yellow eyes of a coyote before it flinched away. “This looks familiar.”

“It’s a dead end.”

She put the car in reverse and then paused a moment to stare me down in the dark car, her forehead wrinkling prettily. “You, my friend, have real trust issues.”

Events on West Stream: For Lu She

Wei Ying-wu — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:31:11 -0700

My bedroom door overlooks a jade stream
the stillness of dawn drives cares away
a fine rain reaches deserted woods
ripples spread across the water

Autumn Landscape

Hồ Xuân Hương — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:19:47 -0700

Drop by drop rain slaps the banana leaves.
Praise whoever sketched this desolate scene:

the lush, dark canopies of the gnarled trees,
the long river, sliding smooth and white.

A Model for the Priesthood

Tomás Q. Morín — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:51:38 -0700

In thigh-deep water we lashed the air with our rods
and re-examined the eternal questions: tongue, eye, nose—

which one has the shortest route to the brain, the heart:
which nails would you release first if it were given to you,

the feet or the hands: if Chickamauga meant river of the dead
then what were the implications for all bodies of water?

After It

Anne Marie Rooney — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:50:51 -0700

The Hudson dark like a rock.

The Hudson rocking this boat.
There is no light coming from it.
There is a boat moving blackly
through the night. He holds out
his hand.

I sit next to a man I never loved but let

kiss me wetly for two months.

Jersey twinkles in and out of this.

When will I turn back

to a cold, gold thing? After

the year the river still presses
with a kiln’s glowing shade.
Knots of burnt rubber
unlace the air.
They were not bodies because bodies
travel faster.

Spell

Alice Jones — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 16:49:59 -0700

Spelling was beyond me, “unlettered small-knowing

soul,” ungoverned, on
Sesame Street—Forgetful Jones. Hymns have their rhythm,

Dickinson stole

from church, problematic anthems, black and white speckles on

the “theme”

notebooks, blue lines, red margin. I ought to have a scheme,

something other than

a compulsion to fill in the blanks. This is your skin, prepared for a

thousand words,

this is your tongue prepared for four scrolls. “Certain bounds hold

against chaos.”

The Escape Artist, Chapter 2

Joanna Walsh — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

In a tour de force of dreams and desires, our heroine begins to reveal the heart of the matter. Chapter 1 is available here for those who missed the first installment.