Author: laurenalwan

The Empire Builder, by Ann Hedreen We were about to stake our claim to a future empire called marriage. What better way to start out than to travel to this unexplored land via a train called The Empire Builder? Especially when, for the price of our one-way tickets from Chicago to Seattle, we could load … Continue reading Americana Stories—Nonfiction

Ride at Woodside, by Jed Myers Woodside Amusement Park…in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania…constructed in 1897 by the Fairmount Park TransportationCompany…continued operations until 1955.                                                                                      —Wikipedia  Copy of Jed Myers_Ride at WoodsideDownload Jed Myers is the author of Watching the Perseids (Sacramento Poetry Center Book Award), The Marriage of Space and Time (MoonPath Press), and the forthcoming Learning to … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Sisyphus, by Ben Drevlow Every morning I let the pitbull out and he sprints the length of the yard, bops his bowling ball head on the door of the shed. Every morning I let the pitbull out and he sprints the length of the yard, bops his bowling ball head on the door of the … Continue reading Americana Stories—Flash Fiction

Revel—Nonfiction by Angela Townsend Photo copyright 2007 Helen Filatova, via Wikimedia Commons On days that shine, my eyes are open. I am still blinking, adjusting to the light that does not seem to be going anywhere. It’s not that I expected it to abandon me, yet here I am, surprised by its extended stay. I’ve … Continue reading Americana Stories—Nonfiction

Peter Peter, by Linda Cooper She lit a match, a candle,a wick that was once only stringand wax. Something happened before that.Her cheek on tile. Boot and fist.The walls too slick to climb.Slow seep of dignity and angeruntil only loneliness remained. The drift is hard to bear. Continental plateswandering oceans. A sack of diamondsembroidered with … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Rattlesnakes, by Don Noel I was eighteen years old when I first heard the admonitory buzz of a rattlesnake’s tail. In pre-dawn gloom, my arms full of a half-dozen shiny-clean buckets, I had just elbowed open the door of the dairy barn on a ranch in the California high desert. Though still a callow greenhorn, … Continue reading Americana Stories—Nonfiction

Meatballs, by Amy Cook Having angled off into our adult existences, it is not unusual for my siblings and I to be apart on Thanksgiving. The mornings of padding around in the oversized t-shirts, flipping back and forth, from the real version of the parade to the suspect one on CBS, are long retired. Jewish … Continue reading Americana Stories, The Food Court—Essay

Cicero Said Memory is the Strong Mental Grasp of Matter and Words, by Abriana Jette (a villanelle was here, then lost) Language leaves him first. He fumbles his words.Cicero said, “silence is the great art of conversation” but his silence maddens.Dark mind of nerves zapping.There are words we don’t say because they matter. Non Hodgkin’s. … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Make Peace with the Cake, by Olga Zilberbourg Our Leo was six or seven weeks old when we received advice from fellow Russians, as we came to call ourselves after twenty years in the US. They had two kids in elementary school and when they shared their parenting philosophy, Sioma and I listened. “We don’t … Continue reading Americana Stories, The Food Court—Fiction

Crow Woman, by Geraldine Connolly Is-sap -ah'-ki, Crow Woman, was an Arickaree, born in the village of that tribe, located on the Missouri, some distance below the Mandanvillages.  Mrs. Kipp paid a fabulous sum for her.Thirty horses, a gun, two dozen tinsof tobacco, ten blankets were tradedfor Crow Woman and her daughter. Her tribe had … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry