Issue: 2013

Susan Stinson is the Writer in Residence at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the author of Belly Songs, Fat Girl Dances with Rocks, Venus of Chalk, and Martha Moody. Her upcoming book, Spider in a Tree (Small Beer Press, Oct 2013), is … Continue Reading

Dad was dying. I was the only one of the children without a steady job and so the obvious choice to fly down to Florida and navigate him through to the end. The morning after I arrived at his condo, he entered the hospital for the last time. There were … Continue Reading

There was a time in Greenwich when people kept a car for more than a year and could look at their house and say, “Maybe this is enough.” When my grandparents, Jean and Dean Barker, moved to Greenwich in 1968, it was actually a pretty ordinary town. The … Continue Reading

My grandmother shows me my first yellow rose, pale – called Moonlight Glow – which she tends by the stone wall beyond the old, old house. I shut tight my eyes to see us both in the afternoon light. There’s a tale of Bereft in that house which doesn’t y … Continue Reading

He is reaching around her – claw foot tub, oceanography. I could say islands, but instead – weigh stations, always this or that, always weather. She is wondering what it might be like to take a class at the University, what might have been the ending t … Continue Reading

[OLD MAN, SON I and SON II are gathered in a kitchen, which is sparsely decorated and drab. In the middle of the room is a small kitchen table with three chairs, and in the corner, a grey refrigerator and a white stove. There is one window over the sin … Continue Reading