The Literary Issue

December 15, 2005

On the Recovery of Ancient Literature

Sometime in an Oxford Greek class in 1895, a professor got off on a tangent about the vast repositories of long-lost ancient texts that might be lying preserved in the hot sands of Upper Egypt….The following year, Egyptian authorities converted what remained of the mineral-rich dirt to fertilizer.

by Lucas Barron Barron on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Circumstances of my Death, Preferred

1. Bad gumbo. 2. While walking down an alley, Upper East Side, film-noir/cartoon-splat!: a pea-green piano falling from a fourth-floor window or thereabouts. 3. Falling from a fourth-floor window or thereabouts. 4. Eighty years old, at home, with friends, conversation … Read More

by J.D.M. Williams on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Ted Hughes is Dead

I. Ted Hughes has died and gone to Hell. Most of the time he died as a human, Almost every time with his eyes open. The first time he died, he was a woman crawling on hands and knees, through … Read More

by Kyle Booten on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Recovery

On Allie’s fourteenth birthday, Christopher felt his hard-won sanity begin its retreat—right there at the kitchen table. It started as he watched Allie, his step-daughter, try to tell Cyndi, her mother, stories about their day at Christopher’s parents’ ranch: the … Read More

by Kean Tonetti on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Old Europe, Astral America

“France is just a country. America is a concept.”
-Jean Baudrillard

by Hal Parker on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

The Car Tree Game

There’s a man claiming to have seen a giant squid. He says it came up close to the edge of the bay, swimming in T-waves, and shaking a little bit. He says it probably would have eaten him alive, but that he got away just in time.

by Lisa Kelley on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Poems

1. we drove up the long hill to the top of the cemetery she showed me how they portioned off the dead the Serbians here, the Blacks on the other side, then the Greeks at the end. I got out … Read More

by Danielle Carlson on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Return to Hue, Vietnam

The heat veil descends the third week of July and the market vendors feel its suffocation. Next to the stall of spices, a woman holds a cleaver, perched just an arm’s length from the spiked jackfruit shell. She brings it … Read More

by Anh-Thu Ngo on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

My Viking

My Viking stood at six-foot-eight, barrel-chested and ginger haired. His breath always tasted of dark rich beer and his moustache tickled my lips. Sometimes when I was doing the crossword or watching people through my window he would come up … Read More

by Caroline Loevner on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Poems

Mack’s Conversion Skimming back and forth across the Holy Land, Elijah felt the need to set down his chariot and he did so upon the banks of the Jordan. He came to a small tavern near to that spot wherein … Read More

by John Raimo on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Dogmael

I can’t say I’m anything to be anyone to be saying a thing about it, but I’s heard it enough, I have, as much as any. But it was, gah, it was over yonder ways near Bristhlewaight or Skinnamarok or … Read More

by Chris Arp on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Two Short Pieces About Love

I. The old man and the old woman have been married for many years. Scattered around their small house are indications of the time that has passed; a doll the husband brought back from Japan, in a paper-thin kimono that … Read More

by Laurel Lathrope on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Desperately Seeking Franny

The first two times I read Franny and Zooey, I was going through, to borrow a phrase from Salinger, a “blue period.” I have come to identify these low times with the term “melancholy,” a gloomy Victorian adjective that has … Read More

by Eleanor Barkhorn on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013

Bones

“I saved a man’s life today.” She’s asleep. I climb into bed. My mouth hovers hot over her ear. “I saved a man’s life today.” That does it. She rolls over and has this medusa look. Quickly, I drop and … Read More

by Josh Hirshfeld on December 14, 2005March 17, 2013