The Assumption
From “The Assumption,” a short play based on the medieval Lives of the Virgin. The hero is Mario, a college freshman struggling with his sexuality who mistakes an undiagnosed case of appendicitis for a pregnancy. In this scene, he has been confiding in Lupe, the dorm’s janitress, who reveals herself to be the Virgen de Guadalupe; they are speaking Spanish, which sounds like unrhymed English verse.
Stieglitz
He’s old, Stieglitz is, when I’m looking at this photograph in my dining room. It’s one hundred and forty-three years since he was born, but he’s still hunched over his desk in his little, crowded gallery like he was when I was born. In this white-framed photograph, isolated from dust and light in the corner […]
Michael Sard Was Here
A short story.
J&L Vignettes
The Alex Adams award was established in 2007 in memory of its namesake, Jay Alexander Adams. It provides financial support to undergraduates who elect to spend two months of their summer producing an original work of art. Halcyon Person ’10 was one of the two recipients chosen last spring. What follows are excerpts from her project, for which she spent the summer in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, conducting interviews with members of her father’s and grandfather’s generation who had worked at the since closed Jones & Laughlin Steel Mill.
Garglepot
At that age we took our fascination in the lot of the adult world. Through the peers we put to turmoil – musky boys of brashness or slighted vigor, and the balmy girls, the sweet or mousy, the striving harlequins – we accessed the quiet amblings of their mothers and their fathers.
(A Poem)
An untitled work.
Arm and a Leg
My little sister has this disease that makes all of her limbs fall off.
Excerpts from Family History
A short story.
Vignettes from the Hinterlands
On the seventieth anniversary of Ataturk’s death I was in the mountains between Van and Diyarbakir with a baby on my lap and her three year old brother stretched out on the seat behind me while their mother tried to sleep, the silk scarf slipping from her hair.