When I arrived at the Army Induction Center in 1954, I was required to fill out a form so that my dog tags could be punched out. Among the information to be included, beyond name and serial number, was religious orientation. The choices were Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or None. I chose the last.
Category: Essays
Perfectionist by Vanessa Chastain Rivas
I read a passage, but I did not read it. Words entered and passed against the hardened nerves of a paralyzed brain. Trembling, trembling. Shriveled, calloused and jaded, the nerves registered nothing, transported no phrases through epic distances, and deciphered no code.
The House That Built Me by Cory Fosco
Firsts by Nathan Evans
Truth and Drumsticks by Pauline M. Campos
When I was a baby, my thighs were so chubby that one of my aunts used to eat them like drumsticks. It’s a story I heard often when I was growing up, usually told with the requisite giggles from my mother and a pinch on my legs from whomever else was within reach.
Confession by Nancy J. Brandwein
I am the person who steams and huffs and rolls her eyes when you stand at the deli counter ordering half pound quantities of three different deli meats. I am the person who barrels through the bank door without turning around to say “thank you” while you hold the door open.
The Saint of Broken Bones by Cameron Witbeck
I can’t stop looking at you. You look like you do on the cross; but there’s no cross. It’s just you. You’re floating, arms spread out, reaching for the walls. There are holes in your hands but you’re smiling.
“Matthew Sweeney,” Father Bill calls from the front of the church, where he sits beneath your statue.
Home Court by Thalia Bardell
Scraping the Bottom by Nancy J. Brandwein
…We have dubbed him “radio dictator” for his insistence on having the radio permanently tuned to the local Oldies station. Yet, the music, which should provide a bouncy soundtrack for our family vacation, pushes me into treacherous territory—the gap between what I once thought my romantic life would be and what it has become.
Real Unreal Things by Andrew David King
I was fourteen, and the rose was perfect. I’d engineered an equally perfect plan for the major opportunity my freshman-year Sadie Hawkins dance presented: one of the most admired girls in class had asked me—me?— to go with her. Over MySpace, sure, and we hardly spoke