Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
The ferryman watched the two men waiting for the boat. One was in a policie uniform, the other was not, but that was all the ferryman could see. He wouldn’t know more until he could read the sign on the riverbank wall that said Výtoň. The ferryman, who called himself Jan, pulled back on the throttle as the boat passed beneath Vyšehrad Bridge. The dark…
A Full Recounting of Flowers, That is, Remembering a Time When I Nearly Transformed What Really Happened Into Myth Back when he climbed into my bed, I was fourteen. In a whisper he claimed, “Love between men is the purest form, when you stop and think about it.” When he stopped kissing my mouth, I heard a gasp—. Then my thoughts returned like a snow-shower…
She had broken her own rule and opened the quarter bottle of brandy at four instead of six, when the crows noisily circled their homes.
Artist Joan Huiner Ranzini is an abstract painter living and working in Virginia. Her work process and product have a structure and intensity of feeling shaped by a background in drawing, architectural design and travel in Japan, expressed using a non-derivative palette and imagery. Ms. Ranzini received her BA with High Honors from the College of William and Mary, Fine Arts, emphasis architecture. She received…
In the first chapter of her instructional text Steering the Craft, Ursula K. Le Guin observes that “getting an act or an idea across isn’t all a story does. A story is made out of language, and language can and does express delight in itself just as music does. Poetry isn’t the only kind of writing that can sound gorgeous.” Many good writers of fiction and creative nonfiction employ…