Category: Nonfiction
-
“Hourglass, Hourglass,” an essay by Loie Rawding from Vol. 9
12:11 a.m.We lost power, just as my body was turning to stone and sinking into the wet concrete of Sunday sleep. The whole house. The street. From here to Broadway there was no light, no heat, only a failing sense of time. The missing spark of the water heater, the lung collapse of my humidifier,…
-
From Vol. 9: “Dear Editor Who Sent Me a Rejection Letter on Christmas, or Essay That Ends in a Fugue” by Sean Thomas Dougherty
At first I was like for real, man. Really? But then I immediately thought of my coworker Wayne, whose wife died a few years ago near Christmas, and what dismal days the holidays are for him, each colored light blinking on every house a stop light for this life, a demarcation, a calling back to…
-
Bards & Brews Reader, a 2016-17 anthology of series performers
BNB logo designed by Emily Weddle Table of Contents FICTION “Shangri La Dee Da” Dan Mancilla “Bigfoot’s Overcoat” Matthew Fogarty NONFICTION “Staff Meeting” “Rescue” “Scorpio, Born in the Year of the Cock” “Go, Jim Dandy” Ginny MacDonald Broadside Excerpt from “Field Notes” Josh MacIvor-Andersen POETRY “How to Skin a Rabbit” “Assembly Instructions for…
-
An Essay from the Future: “What the Birds See” by Janice Lee
—for and with AH Bird 1: How might we envision a future that is not ours, but could be?Bird 2: What you are asking about is the rejection of linear time, because linearity is for the colonizer, in which there is only one kind of progress.Bird 1: And what kinds of progress do we have?Bird…
-
“The Other Iras: A Multiverse Essay,” nonfiction from The Future by Ira Sukrungruang
Ira finds an anthill, and instead of burning it, he watches the slow, tedious work of carrying a crumb into the earth. In this way, he learns the true meaning of weight loss. Ira burns his steak and the pan that cooks the steak and the kitchen where he is cooking the steak. The fire…
-
Essay Hybrid: “Gnome: Excerpts” by Robert Lunday
Kouroi step forward and their smiles are votive candles. How much is lived between the words? What we need to see hides in the blind spots. The more we close our eyes, the more our faces open. Contours ripple to a point of disappearance. Whites of the eyes enhance gaze signals. Eyebrows exaggerate expression. A…
-
Nonfiction Essay: Philip James Shaw’s “when i’m having a difficult time maintaining my concentration with regard to certain aspects of my most immediate surroundings”
when i am away to work.I can work. I can even go away to work. I work as well as I can. Even though it changes, I am keeping up. A hotel room is a cleanser of sleep, of my life. Devoid of attachments, I splay myself out on the King, in less than boxer…
-
Three Essays from Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past: Kathryn Nuernberger
Introduction to the Symbols of the Revolution My husband is not interested in reading about Marie Antoinette’s hair. “Isn’t this a little girly for you?” he says. I show this man everything I write because he gives the best advice of anyone I know. He gives it in a way that is harsh, even when…
-
An Essay by Isabelle Davis: “Lay Off the High Ones”
They failed to come back to Earth1, gravity, conventional use of time. B says, That would be the best way to die. To become fire, immediately after seeing outside of a world everybody else you know will never see outside of, would be so simple. Everything would be colors. Eighteen people have died in…
