Tag: calyx journal

“There are many versions of the American Dream, I want to tell my parents. The one involving a large house with a picket fence and two-car garage is just one of them. Just as there are many versions of your daughter. There’s a version that prays four times a day and recites the Quran. There is a version that enjoys hanging out with friends, including men, on Saturday nights with cans of beer and board games. There is a version that fasts during the month of Ramadan. There is a version that gets pepperoni on her pizza during the rest of the year.”

“’Two weeks,’ Tamara echoes, like she’s mulling it over. Her legs are dangling over the arm of the chair. ‘Why don’t you just break up with him the normal way?’
‘Because that would require confrontation,’ I explain.
‘And knitting an entire sweater is easier than confrontation.’
‘Yes.’
Tamara turns to Lark for support, but he’s nodding solemnly. ‘Yeah, that holds up,’ he says.”

“Today I celebrate my only bangle
my one-hand applause
the gold leaf on my family tree
my hand-hammered heritage
my blood.”

“a white moth arrives rising and falling
on the warm breeze, lingers on the headstone

then on my bare arm, clinging as if
searching for moist skin or the scent of me.”

“I stare out the window
over the sink, the citrus soap promising
something pure as we shelter in place.
A rolling fog smokes the green
grass. The vixen glides her grizzled gray
between orchard and rock wall border.”

“Because this is endearment not indictment
I’ll say that I admire the commitment you’ve recently made
to eating your berries with the knife used to clean them
rather than using a spoon.”

“The expression that rubbed Luz raw was the one her mother used more often than all of her Ave Marías and all of her Ay Benditos—and she said those a lot. The one proverb that always made Luz feel ill at ease—and she was not too sure why—was: Con la boca cerradita te ves más bonita: you look prettier with your mouth shut.”

“one was peering at a recipe
for risotto, the other
at the microscopic script
in an obsolete telephone book.”

“You salt the egg anticipating
the salt. Count on the hill
for the view, and, when you get to the top,

there’s the view.”

“We approach
middle age as undiscovered country when
really it’s the same old alley, the bowling pin
that wobbles like a drunk but won’t go down.”

“In quietude I feel I am everywhere at once—my own body rehearsing its wintering act, too. I look up from the table to the far side of the lake to see a buck limping, his hind legs sixteenth-notes in the dry leaves. From far off, a shot sounds like an encyclopedia falling to a wooden floor and like the echo of its striking.”

“It’s too good to last, this early sunshine in April,
this smell-of-cut-grass morning
and this body, with its mirage of infinite breaths,
its lie of immortality.”

“It’s official: dementia and medication. Not unexpected. But getting the ICD code is like being pinned. Mom does not protest.
The transitions before me are not unique, I know. Yet the fact that they’re universal and part of life matters as much to me as cocktail party chitchat.
What I treasure are tiny pearls that appear in mundane surroundings, a particular moment between particular people.”

“He half-licks at the food, turns away, or shifts, licks at himself and tears out patches of gray fur. This food was living light, green where it drank from the sunlight.” Enjoy this audio recording of “I Tell My Dying Cat Stories About his Food” by Kristine Nowak from Vol. 32:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the

“We didn’t hear what she couldn’t say because the prairie stitches women’s mouths shut.” Enjoy this audio recording of “Soapstone” by Courtney Huse-Wika from Vol. 31:3 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Courtney Huse-Wika teaches writing in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She believes in the art of collection: overheard quotes, bird facts, forgotten stories,

“When I imagine a life after this one, I imagine a field. And in this field, there are people running toward each other, delighted to be able to.“ Enjoy this audio recording of “What I Mean by ‘I Love You. Goodbye.’” by Kristine Nowak from Vol. 32:2 of CALYX Journal! Buy the full issue here. Kristine Nowak

“revolve this landscape encased by pulverized petals the stories round the wood in areola waves” This audio recording of “Rings of Pink, Enheduanna” by Nicole Miyashiro from Vol. 32:1 of CALYX Journal was inspired by Diane Samuels’ art piece, “Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas/Testimony Against Gertrude Stein”, 2011 (ink on handmade paper, coated in pulverized

“The dentist reassures me that my tongue looks fine, that the sensation I feel of its edge fraying against my teeth is “just nerves.” He assures me that it won’t choke off my breathing. Mostly he has answered “I don’t know” to my questions, but I trust this (I don’t have much choice.) The pain

Now that you have, hopefully, had a chance to read the full version of Family Fest, Lynn Casteel Harper’s compelling, insightful essay from the Summer 2012 edition of the CALYX Journal, please enjoy this equally thoughtful interview she did about the piece. “Family Fest” is set during a weekend-long Christian music gathering, which your narrator does

Sara Kirschenbaum’s photograph, “Pears,” can be found in the Winter 2012 edition of CALYX Journal. Here’s what she had to say about everything from photography to feminism to food. How has your personal visual style evolved throughout the years? I had a very strong visual inheritance. Both my parents are artists and Bauhaus educated. My