I got your jewelry, a couple of scarves, and an old dress I claimed just because it looked like you. But familiar though the earrings are, the scarf, the dress, the emerald pin, no matter how I squint into the past I can’t make out your face and now I fear I never really saw [...]
Inheritance
by Darlene Young
Where We Are From
by Trisha Coffman
Roads no longer merely lead to places; they are places. —John Brinkerhoff Jackson, landscape historian. McCAMMON, IDAHO, IS 1.4 SQUARE MILES, a dot so mere on the map that it’s easily missed beneath the bold font declaring the location of Bannock County’s other, far more prominent town, Pocatello. I’d certainly never heard of McCammon before, [...]
Contest Honorees, Essays, Summer 2008
Wednesday
by Emily Summerhays
Co‑Winner, Heather Campbell Personal Essay Contest EVERY MORNING and every evening, I walk alone through the darkened halls of one of the most famous museums in the world. The cultural collection here is one of the world’s largest, and millions of visitors walk these halls each year in the daylight hours. Every day, they press up [...]
Shearing
by Allyson Smith
IN THE PHOTO I am leaning in stiffly, artificially, with an exaggerated smile. The man at my side is not leaning back. Although the couch is crowded with people, there is a visible gap between my grandfather and me—narrow, maybe, but deep. When I first pulled the picture out of the envelope, the only thing I [...]
Mimesis Upended: A Reluctant Nod to Mr. Wilde
by Sharlee Mullins Glenn
How did she see peaches, never seeing a Cezanne? This mother of my mother who passed to me, across a generation, her own deep-burning need for Beauty. Or so I’m told. “You remind me of your grandma,” my mother used to chide as she coaxed me from pages abloom with Renoirs and Monets. “Only she [...]