Zazz Zu Zazz
I’d stopped at a drugstore on 125th Street after school to buy some bubble gum when I heard a scuffle break out and a woman scream…
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Fall 2009
Editor's Note
Welcome to the inaugural issue of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. We're pleased to announced our new 2010 Literary Contest. $1,000 Prize for Fiction and/or Nonfiction. Final Judge: ANDRE DUBUS. And $500 Prize for Poetry. Final Judge: TERRANCE HAYES. Click Contests for details. We welcome your regular submissions as well, and the authors welcome comments on their terrific pieces. Also, please note our outstanding photography section. Check in for updates in the next week. We're starting a new dialogue. Lee Hope
Fiction
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Funeral Detail – April 2009 from We All Fall Down
As the rain poured down, Justin was not looking forward to getting out of the van. He was not looking forward to playing the fake, electric, bugle for the hero that he was being paid fifty bucks to honor…
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Season of Giving
It was the humblest of hometowns, but in a secret place inside himself he liked to think of it as The City By The Sea…
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Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right
When I asked Bird if she would stay for good, she laughed and said You should know by now. Don’t you know what I’m thinking? This was after the fire…
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Long Gone, a Tamara Hayle Mystery — Chapter One
I was Pet Hayle’s one and only call, which shocked the hell out of me…
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One Last Time
“Danny died Tuesday,” Parker’s tight voice announces.
“I’m not having a good day,” I tell the answering machine, refusing to pick up…
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Poetry
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World Wide Web
It’s a little like Gulliver, pinned down by Lilliputians—
the whole planet woven back and forth with invisible bonds of electricity…
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Lazarus, Raised
Voices fade then roar. Figures shifting
in and out of focus unbind his hands and feet…
Lazarus shoves them aside…
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Popular Music
All winter I drove to work Oh, what a beautiful morning!
singing in my head as if I believed in the power
of positive thinking…
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Nonfiction
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An Elongated Tear: Culebra
Culebra is an American Virgin island with a fierce sound for a past, a sound that still hollows it out and leaves it damaged…
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Memory, Fact, Imagination, Research: Memoir’s Hybrid Personality
At a writers’ conference not long ago, I gave a public reading from “Trading Off,” a memoir that for the most part dramatizes a turbulent relationship I’d had with an old high school baseball coach. During the q and a, I was asked the usual questions: “Did it really happen the way you wrote it?”
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