“I know I made some small talk then, but the rest is a blur: the pot-bellied stove and the shelves (and shelves and shelves) of pickles and preserves, put up by Mama Boleman…

“The intensity inherent in such relationships is wearing, demanding in the extreme, and likely to produce missteps and strange, if not actually bad, judgment. But, it is glorious. Ashley Wilkes may be virtuous and…

“It took 20 years and a series of chance events. Adjacent cubicles. Adjacent streets. An overheard comment. Then, 20 years passed me by, unaware that Cupid had targeted me. Sometimes you just get…

“We often hear the word quirky applied to contemporary poets (just glance at five random blurbs, you’re sure to find quirky), but perhaps no one writing today inhabits the word quite as fully…

“Because you’re in a hurry and there’s no time for research, you re-invent the street names in downtown Portland, or pretend to have inside information on the corporate structure and jargon of the…

“Love is strange and calls me to stranger things/When I was young I thought that I’d know why./I’ve drawn my life—a shape with forty wings.”—Luke Hankins Speculative Friction By Claire Bateman GREENVILLE South…

“Reader, pause here. What followed was, and remains, an utterly unique experience in my life. This was no shop girl waving strips of scented blotting paper, hawking mass-produced aromas in a mall. This…

“I still struggle every day to find meaning in a universe without meaning. Whom shall I serve? For now, I can serve individuals and society by teaching and acting as if a single…

“I still have the stained and faded green notebook in which I wrote all the recipes, 96 in all, beginning with velouté de volaille (cream of chicken soup) on October 23rd and finishing…

“As a trumpet player, I can recall a few stand-out moments of inspiration in my formative years. One was listening to Miles Davis perform the most profound solo on the song “My Funny…