ISSUES | winter 2015

One of the exemplary roles of art is to seek the truth—or some reasonable version of it—in the multiplex of illusions that surrounds humans. It can be sought in ways…    read more

“Leonardo Da Vinci’s Ultima Cena”
“Jan Steen’s Girl Eating Oysters”
“Grandma Moses’ Thanksgiving Scene”
“Geometry Salad”
“Rivera’s Tortilla Maker”

He didn’t need to drink. He liked it, but he didn’t need it. He knew that was the stance of someone who did need to drink, but he was different.…    read more

You are being romanced by William Wallace, the real one, not the blue-faced, thick-fingered, pre-nutjob Mel Gibson version, while you lie sleeping next to your snoring husband in real life.…    read more

Liliane’s Balcony: A Novel of Falling Water by Kelcey Parker. Rose Metal Press, 208 pp., $14.95 (paper). A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me by David Gates. Alfred A. Knopf,…    read more

And so it came to be that on the evening of July 24, 1865, Joshua Clantz, formerly of Kaskaskia, Illinois, and the Army of the Potomac, arrived at the Post…    read more

Walter had just concluded the first week of a two-week adult program he was leading in Barcelona when he and his colleagues, a woman in her midthirties and a man…    read more

Missy heard that her mom was in the hospital, had been assaulted in her own home, from a second cousin who had listened to the whole thing on her police…    read more

Our mother, Ruth, went on a diet. She drank Tab from plastic cups that she covered with lipstick marks; she ate cottage cheese on wheat toast. She ordered a box…    read more

“Globe Mallow”
“Etymology/Diction or The Earthly Beatification of Miss Lilly McCree”

“Kid, this is October”
“Kid, this is Iowa”
“Kid, this is the first rain”
“Kid, these are train tracks”
“Kid, I remember 1968”