My Life in Four Year Terms

AMHERST, Massachusetts — I’m floating peacefully in a warm sea of amniotic fluid, when the voice of Ronald Reagan penetrates my subdural Shangri-La. It reverberates through the nodes and ventricles of my mother’s body like the voice of Darth Vader, causing me to somersault and burrow deeper into the womb. There I wait, weeks past my due date, growing ever plumper and more powerful off my host. On November 4th, my parents watch the election returns on our analog TV. I
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Creative Non Fiction

Hobart •

The Sharp Edge Of The Crayon

Our first grade teacher, Miss Baudendistel, summoned us to her desk one by one. When it was my turn, I opened my mouth and tipped back my chin so that she could inspect the progress of my six-year molars. The results she recorded in a ledger, along with my attendance, heartbeat, and head-to-body ratio. She kept the ledger on her desk beside the beeswax candle, the glass inkwell and the silver chime she used to called us to order. Austrian philosopher Rudolph Steiner, founder and patron saint of
About Place Journal •

Marry, Fuck, Desert Island

Profa perches on the edge of a desk, long tawny legs crossed under her miniskirt. She’s around forty, with wavy black hair and a faint mustache on her upper lip. She expounds on Marx’s theory of alienated labor between drags on her cigarette. In her Cuban accent, Marx sounds like Mars. The classroom walls are blue grey, except where desks have chipped away sedimentary layers of green and burnt orange. The only light comes from four tall, narrow windows, screened by an overgrown palm tree. Elect
Einar H. Reynis
GulfStream Lit Magazine •

Angel

I’m sitting atop the Escalinata, eighty-eight steps above the streets of Havana. Between the crumbling pastel high rises I can just make out the blue stripe of the Straits of Florida, one shade darker than the sky. I’m writing a letter in my notebook to my best friend back in Wisconsin. Later, during my 30-minute weekly-alloted internet time at the study abroad program office, I’ll copy it into an email. I lean back against one of the Corinthian columns, which open onto the leafy University quad
Sliver of Stone Magazine •

Free Riding in Havana, by Anna Laird Barto

Whistles followed me down 23rd Street. Men leaned over rickety balustrades to shout “¡Mamacita!” or “Marry me?” When I first got to Havana, the attention made me feel like a movie star, but soon I just felt like a piece of meat. I was on my way home from the University of Havana, where I was studying for the semester, one of the last groups of U.S. students to have the opportunity before President George W. Bush enacted new travel restrictions in 2004. It was about two miles from campus to the
Cargo Literary Magazine •

Never Forget June 14th: Revisiting Oaxaca Ten Years Later

“Is Trump really going to build a wall?” Sofi wants to know. She Armando and I are at Micheland, a new bar in Colonia Reforma that specializes in Micheladas—beer flavored with salt and chile. “I don’t think so, not literally. It’s expensive and impractical. Not even all the Republicans support it.” “From where we sit,” Armando says. “It seems like half of America is racist.” I try to explain the electoral college over the cumbia music. “I’m not saying there isn’t racism, but a lot of it is ju