Author: themuseumofamericana

Who Knows What the Barren Snow Will Bring, by Elizabeth Burk ~~~ Elizabeth Burk is a psychologist who lives in New York and southwest Louisiana. Her three published collections are: Learning to Love Louisiana, Louisiana Purchase and Duet—Poet & Photographer. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Rattle, Calyx, Louisiana Literature, Pithead Chapel, … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Brick, by Emily Hoover 1. Dad slips the brick of instant noodles into boiling water. I sit at the table, my feet not yet touching the floor. We use past-due hospital bills as placemats. Dad pushes Mom’s vase of fake flowers aside when he hands me the steaming bowl. The canned chicken is rubbery, like … Continue reading Americana Stories, The Food Court—Flash Fiction

Big Boy Graveyard, by Elijah Sparkman At night, that night, in the Big Boy Graveyard, rabbits played cards underneath the holographic moon. There was a squirrel, too, that scampered. And a fox. And an owl. And all the Big Boy statues that lay in that field smiled unceasingly, a hollow purgatory, a big jumbled picnic … Continue reading Americana Stories, The Food Court—Fiction

The long list of people who want to run away with the circus, by MJ McGinn graffiti pirate ship hold outsasleep in hammocks stickand poke smilesthat feeling when you’re really doing itcombing your hair with fingers and sea shellsmaking coffee in a travel French press pullingwater from a river when your phone midnights to lifeand … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Cityscape After Our Old Cat’s Death and a Summer Shower, by Susanna Lang Ronan Park, Chicago All the traditional June flowers—once-blooming roseslike red velvet blankets thrown over fences, purpleclematis, orange daylilies that only last the day—allmore vivid after the rain; sharper smell of garden dirtand honeysuckle and urine as I walk through puddlesshimmery with oil … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

This Is Not Nostalgia, by Anne Panning  "Rural America's in Decline" the headlines read.I do the math of corn and beans, subtract Main Street.My parents' general store demolished now and dead. They came for overalls, Havarti, twine, white bread;It's best to buy your bacon off the slab."Rural America's in Decline" the headlines read. Who makes … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Two Poems by Robert Estes Discretionary Power We took up chewing tobaccofor a couple of weeksMy friends and I didin the ninth gradeJust to push itto the limit of bravadoI put a chaw in my mouthin class one dayI have no memory ofwhat I did about spittingCouldn’t swallow the juiceso I must have spat intoa … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

Two Poems by KateLynn Hibbard Decompensating Little pings of rain on the window, cold, grey sky,autumn coming.  Now the rain gathers speed,momentum, camaraderie,a social movement of rain, we hurryto get out of the rain as thoughwe don’t know what it is to be wet.Morning gets darker and the streetlightscome back on and today has been … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry

The Queen of Cabbage, by Shayna Shanes I am Queen of the Wallflowers! I am their champion. We are sanguine sisters in blue stockings, armed to the teeth with quills. We prefer a quarto to a quadrille, a counter argument to a contra dance. This is what I told myself as I passed my ribboned … Continue reading Americana Stories—Fiction

What they should have sent was a poet, by Sally Ashton Frank Borman, Apollo 8, the first mission to orbit the Moon    . . .except Borman later said he hadn’t said that, so maybe it was just what everyone else said he’d said. Or wished he’d said, wished so hard that someone decided he had … Continue reading Americana Stories—Poetry