Volume 4:
Work Life
Slaughterers, mechanics, bus drivers, paramedics,
the king of New Hampshire, & more.
Rebecca Flowers
[DESPERATION] A gray-haired man in a green, water-wicking jacket bought The Valley News at the local Circle K in Hanover, and sprayed his cash and coins on the counter. Peggy, the cashier, helped him sort out his money. He asked, "I gave you two dollars?" "Uh-huh." He put his knuckles to his forehead. "There's something wrong with my head." His hands were veined green like his jacket. He suddenly bent over the counter, cheeks scrunched and teeth clenched. "You okay?" Peggy asked. She stretched her arms out toward him. "Bad toe," he said, rotating his ankles. He took his papers and left. A regular at the gas station. Peggy was scared about how he'd cringed. The pain wasn't always so obvious... [more] |
|
* * * * *
Volume 3:
Don't Tread On Me
Andrew Lohse
[RADICALS] No reform can secure our food and energy self-sufficiency against the rapidly-approaching “collision between Petroleum Man’s vision of infinite growth and the fact that we live on a finite planet.” Our day of reckoning, Rob says, is upon us. He calls the waitress over for some more coffee... [more] |
Annie Gardner
[WOM(Y)N] Deciding how to spell ♀ took a long time. And it doesn’t seem like they came to any definitive conclusion. The blog and the Facebook page and the official documents. That’s the thing about a Collective, about coming to a consensus. There is women, woman, and then there is womyn and wommin and wimmin. Many variations; just no man, no men... [more] |
Rianna Pauline Starheim
[ADDICTION] “Josh drives me crazy,” Britani says. “But then again, he does provide for me. He buys me a phone card every month, that’s $45 bucks. But then, if I don’t answer my phone when he calls, holy shit. All hell breaks lose.” She pauses, taking long drags on her cigarette and lapsing into a rare silence. “Is he the asshole?” she says. “Maybe I’m the asshole. I don’t know. I can be a big jerk. But I don’t think he should be punching holes in the wall next to my head..." [more] |
Jenna van de Ruit
[HELP] “When I first got hired I loved the place, so amazing, no reject, no eject.” Easter Seals accepts everybody and expels no one. “After a couple years of working there I’m like, ‘Oh my god. Can’t we just reject this person? They’ve been killing all their neighbor’s cats.’ ” At first I thought Daniel was joking. He wasn’t. “I read his file and I’m like, ‘Wow, this guy sounds like a serial killer. I’m going to be really nice to him.’ We got along great..." [more] |
Sam Van Wetter
[HOPE] “With my knitting, with my community, it’s like I’m finally living in Technicolor. Or 3-D,” John Crane said, laying his knitting needles on his lap. We were sitting on the porch of his West Hartford, Vermont home. “I spent through age forty trying to live as a heterosexual,” he’d said. “I had a great life, but after coming out, it really was like moving from black and white to living in color.” [more] |
Of Heroin and Other Demons
Lisa Carson & Sarah Khatry
The day Isaac’s life went the rest of the way down the staircase, he literally fell down a staircase. And out a window. And then the cops showed up. He had taken a bunch of pills and drank some booze he stole from his parents. Trying to understand Isaac’s story is like putting together a thousand piece puzzle blindfolded, using only your thumbs. It’s partially because he keeps interrupting himself with things like, “You guys ever do mushrooms?” He sees one of his friends. “Lulu! Hey, dude, oh come here, come here, you’re a drug addict. Look, they’re trying to talk to drug addicts...” [more]
|
When Lisa and I asked Anna if she had wanted to be clean, she said, "Honestly, no. My attitude was, I'm young, I should be able to party." She loved the lifestyle: "the cars, the money, the people." In Hartford, Connecticut, she said, she'd cut the raw heroin and seal 2500 bags in a go. Sometimes, to fuck with people, she'd swap out the stamps she was using. They'd get the latest batch of the same dope and tell her last week's was better, or this week's was the shit. She said she was rolling with the Latin Kings... [more]
|
* * * * *
Volume 4, Spring 2019 / Contributors
Sarah Khatry
|