Voicemails
We’re at Tony’s Italian by the mall when my husband orders cheesy breadsticks and announces he’s leaving me. “I wanted to do it at your favorite restaurant,” he tells me later, “so you’d have comfort food handy.” I wonder what I’ve done to make him think Tony’s …
Read More
That old, yellow pair
after Gwendolyn Brooks At least, they had each other—another voice to say grace before eating, another pair of light brown eyes looking back once the beans were done. Two adherents of a religious order, quiet and solemn at the table among the little they had in their mid-century, rented …
Read More
Litmus
ONE: In November, you are dancing in a club with your partner of ten months. The music is too loud, and you are sober. A grown man approaches from across the room. He says: “Sorry to interrupt, but I just had to ask. Are you Asian?” His voice is …
Read More
A Sentence with a Seam
I learned what a good sentence sounded like at my father’s table, not through confession but through compression. His day reduced to nouns: work, weather, money, the thing that broke, the thing that got fixed. Feelings were implied, if allowed at all, but rarely named. Questions that wandered too …
Read More
Radicle: An Interview with Nina Lichtenstein
Nina B. Lichtenstein is an expat Norwegian Lutheran turned American Viking Jewess with life and teaching experience from three continents. As readers will discover, Lichtenstein is the kind of salt-of-the-earth woman everyone talks about; she adds flavor, positive influence, and kindness to her endeavors and the communities she touches. …
Read More