Creative Non-Fiction

Creative Non-Fiction

issue 23

Featured
To the Man Who Gave Me the Tattoo Behind My Right Ear
To the Man Who Gave Me the Tattoo Behind My Right Ear

To the Man Who Gave Me the Tattoo Behind My Right Ear,

Afterwards, you stood on the gray sidewalk, gray smoke wafting from your cigarette into the gray sky. Wind-born trash skittered across the street.

When the half-pint bottles of Fireball in your brother’s freezer appear
When the half-pint bottles of Fireball in your brother’s freezer appear

When the half-pint bottles of Fireball in your brother’s freezer appear

a good alternative to dealing with the emotional turmoil caused from being in the presence of your immediate and extended family for over five hours, 

At the only Taco Bell in Thomson, Georgia
At the only Taco Bell in Thomson, Georgia

you waited alone for three hours for a tow truck, sitting at a corner booth, as vapor snaked from the hood of your white Ford Fiesta, Why Won’t You Date Me still queued up on your iPhone 6, Chicken Crunchwrap Supreme wrapper crumpled on the passenger seat

Power in Taínofuturism: A Talk With E.G. Condé
Power in Taínofuturism: A Talk With E.G. Condé

Interview with E.G. Condé

Boob Tube
Boob Tube

The subject of my husband remarrying after I die comes up a lot. In fact, we talked about it again the other night while binge-watching one of our favorite shows. The series is a loop of killings and drug deals. However, the part that intrigues me the most is the relationship between the husband and wife. Well, that and the wife’s boobs. 

issue 22

Featured
A Stonecoast Reunion: Aaron Hamburger in Conversation with Shannon Bowring
A Stonecoast Reunion: Aaron Hamburger in Conversation with Shannon Bowring

Stonecoast alumna and former Stonecoast Review Editor-in-Chief Shannon Bowring is the author of The Road to Dalton and the newly released Where the Forest Meets the River. She sat down recently with Stonecoast faculty member Aaron Hamburger, her first mentor in the program, to reflect on her rapid literary trajectory and the high points of their time together as mentor and mentee.

Reaction Time
Reaction Time

His cheeks flush. Folding over the plate—a make-your-own, bearing his hand-drawn city skyline—he spits something out.

The Tree Trimmer
The Tree Trimmer

He died in a tree at the end of our street. I didn’t know his name, but I learned of his death on my evening walk, when the air still carried the scent of grass clippings and overheated lawnmowers.

issue 21

Featured
Sixteen Steps To Eating A Potato
Sixteen Steps To Eating A Potato

1 Choose a tray—red, orange, green, or blue. Notice the scratches. Grab a plastic plate, a napkin, silverware still warm. 

Gender Defiant
Gender Defiant

This week, Tina gets her own phone.

There has been a lot going on.

JJ’s reptile menagerie has been rapidly expanding, which Tina (JJ’s mom) aids and abets because she continually hangs from the grim cliff of knowing that trans kids easily get depressed.

Sir, Ma’am, Sorry
Sir, Ma’am, Sorry

I step up to the counter at the café to order. The young man behind the counter says with cheer, What can I get you this morning, Sir? Just a normal day. An “every single day.”

Sydney Lea: Champion of the Maine Storytelling Tradition A Conversation with Susan Conley
Sydney Lea: Champion of the Maine Storytelling Tradition A Conversation with Susan Conley

Sydney Lea speaks with Susan Conley

What To Do With Rage
What To Do With Rage

The icy morning finds me in bed, engrossed in a book of John Singer Sargent’s watercolors. The thought of staying under the covers all but overwhelms me.

Cloud Seeding
Cloud Seeding

In Dubai, we are not allowed to gather in protest. We are not allowed to display a foreign flag, so two weeks after the fighting begins, my children and I cover our front door instead with slices of construction paper watermelon.

issue 20

Featured
Giudizio Dolce
Giudizio Dolce

 This guy from the Netherlands grated on me and on all our doctoral peers whenever, with his heavily accented but perfect English, he held forth in our European Literature class.

Things I Wanted to Say are Locked Behind the Uvula
Things I Wanted to Say are Locked Behind the Uvula

So when I didn’t say the things I wanted to say, I had hoped you would know. Do you remember? You’ll shake your head. We’ve become all too predictable.

Silent Night
Silent Night

I know what a church pew feels like; to sit on, to touch, to be watched by. I know that even the most comfortable of pews can feel cold. Just because it’s been a while, just because the church has done renovations and now these seats are cushioned, doesn’t mean I don’t know; it doesn’t mean I don’t remember.

Smoke Out of the Jar
Smoke Out of the Jar

In my childhood home, difficult things were stored like smoke in a tight- lidded jar. Hurts, ills, and problems were a visible miasma through the glass, but they would sit in there, dense and palpable, not to be disturbed.

issue 19

Featured
How to Do Sirsasana (Headstand)
How to Do Sirsasana (Headstand)

You’ll need strength to do this.

Driving with Janis Joplin
Driving with Janis Joplin

You’re with me on those summer days, all the windows down and the moon roof open, the sun strong enough to warm our skin but not so strong as to blind us. Your kaleidoscopic bracelets reaching from wrist to elbow clang together, my stubby fingers thrum on the wheel. That’s when I make you sing.

Back to School Night
Back to School Night

I lift the turquoise and purple shawl out of the storage drawer and drape it over my shoulders. The caress of the soft yarn against my skin transports me to an earlier time and place.

Jilted
Jilted

“From here on out,” my therapist says, “we refer to him as L’Ass et Le Putz.”

I live in rural middle Georgia, so few in person therapists are available. Instead, I’m having a tele-health appointment with Charles on encrypted video chat.

issue 18

Featured
Beautiful Swimmers
Beautiful Swimmers

My father calls to tell me that he has to give up swimming. His shoulders started aching awhile back, but he went on swimming until the pain buried itself so deep in his joints, especially at night, that he went to the orthopedist.

issue 17

Featured
remembering the women’s march
remembering the women’s march

In bed with my laptop on Saturday morning, January 21st, 2017, I searched for the livestream of the Women’s March on Washington and clicked open a video window, mindlessly, the way I would flick on a light.

old things
old things

I see myself walking on hard-packed snow, from the fields and towards the river.

the power beyond now
the power beyond now

In the fall of 1965, my family moved into a small, gray-shingled house in Providence, Rhode Island, whose main distinguishing feature was a bright yellow front door.