BEST OF THE NET 2023; Essay in THE BEST AMERICAN ESSAYS 2018;
(cited in BAE 2015, 2016, 2020, 2022); PUSHCART poetry finalist
By Robbie Gamble
Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems by Susan Rich. Salmon Press, 2022, 132 pages, $16.00. A third of the way into this far-ranging collection, Susan Rich includes a poem titled “The Mapparium,” a reminiscence about a school field trip to an unusual Boston landmark, a three-story tall glass globe of the… Read more »
By Robbie Gamble
I have been reflecting lately on the name of this journal, Solstice. Particularly in these late autumnal days here in New England, where afternoons accelerate into darkness sooner and sooner, and the morning light is meager and chill. Darkness is accumulating, and soon the winter solstice will be upon us, that nadir of our days.… Read more »
By Rob Arnold
Like all things, it begins as water and ends as water As water, it may become vapor, steam droplets on a window, a heaviness in the air we bring into our lungs It may become dew or dog piss in the grass, a body’s nourishment or excreta Residue from the time when it once had… Read more »
By Rob Arnold
The raw pearl my mother gave to me, that I gave to you. I carry it sometimes in my dreams, its memory swelling like a blister. Forged from the blood of the Pacific, little grain, little ache on the tongue. * If you held it in your mouth, it would be smooth, semen-colored, embryonic. If… Read more »
By Akhim Yuseff Cabey
I’d petitioned with the power of a molting butterfly to be more than just a sack of polysyllabic slick wisdoms delivered with a staccato snap of righteous fingers. I preferred the grieving soprano whose octaves on moonlit, bonfire nights dampened cheeks and garnered affectionate caresses atop my head. this is why I’ve agreed to supply… Read more »
By Ayokunle Falomo
after José Olivarez because we’re here: everywhere. loud. & colorful. & yes we know crooked but o bless our mothers’ hands. what miracles they carve out of our spines. what blessing it is to swim in the rivers inside our fathers’ and mothers’ palms. & how we toil to prove that the way they… Read more »
By Rebecca Faulkner
My brother drove his car barefoot the dash strewn with empties old cassettes and maps to places he never saw the sharp bend how the river leapt and no-one said suicide but if you’d picked up as I fumbled laundry quarters for the payphone I would’ve told you endings are brutal metal on granite barely time… Read more »
By Emily Grodin
From the dirt we are born, from the ground we breathe life. Waiting just below the surface until the time is right. A soaked up raindrop. A ray of sun that spills over me. But not just yet. Tiny footsteps above me. And a breeze I can’t yet taste. Worried of the world without me… Read more »
By Emily Grodin
A mortal never challenges the gods. Weak and raw in the flesh. At least not intentionally with jealous or spite. But something unquestionable. Undoubtable. Unasked for by human. Gifted instead. Bestowed upon woman a treasure indeed. One that no man, mortal or god, Could question. Beauty in the form of woman who walks the earth.… Read more »
By Kathleen Hellen
no milkstork at the bombed-out shrine in Hamamatsu no wholesomeness three sizes bigger, fatter my mother said that people brewed the tender leaves that steeped in fragrant matcha, mastered yeast from rice the poets tended no kine that cattled cud—no farmers choking on the gases who were these half-calf kids who schooled me in belonging?… Read more »
By Toni Holland
Against the open palm of your dusk I place my fist into your first day of spring and you sing about death by the sink as you make tea. There was no light pollution and the stars were before You had instructed me not to take off my shoes in case there were scorpions on… Read more »
By Alexis Ivy
after the execution of Orlando Hall 11/19/2020 Day has come a man is murdered by our country, it is federally done. Gone and somehow they didn’t print the last meal in recent issue of The Sun. From my soul I need to know if he was full, if the bison was smothered in Land-O-Lakes,… Read more »
By Philip Memmer
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. —Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus” In recognition of my life, the gods provided me, in death, this mountain, this stone. And forever… we all get that. But what good would forever be, without a mountain, a stone? * Sisyphus, the stone whispers, are… Read more »
By Delaney R. Whitebird Olmo
Sing into the thunder drum crow hopping from one foot to The other, and hops will follow My chants and dancing as I invoke Crow’s wings with my arms Extended in the falling snow, hovering into the darkness, my spine vibrating to the sound of my voice, until leaves become buried under this frozen… Read more »
By Lisa Pegram
A heavy cloud of Saharan sand swirls over the Caribbean for several days. The sepia veil is so intense, at high noon the sun looks like a full moon. A thick film of dust on everything. We must stay inside. The air quality is compromised. Ever the poet, a part of me smiles at the… Read more »
By Lisa Pegram
Why not ask if her quizzical smile, aloof plain timeless, is not a blade, pointed at the one who dares attempt to capture her? The so-called “master” who speaks to the canvas as if she were not in the room. Perhaps, she has… Read more »
By Rikki Santer
Someday I may learn my lemons, resist the marigold’s musky dirge, for I have this man who drags his feet through piles of rotting banana peels, residue of strict smoothies too thick for punchlines. Too often he trudges back into the dark forest with ocher pigment smudged on his forehead and cheeks to hunt for… Read more »
By John Sibley Williams
the sea is called / a body & the children / are still dying / so far from here / & here sometimes / bones rearranged into / drowned or dragged off skyward / biopsied or blood– slicked pavement / at night / when the white pines cut against an un- / white sky /… Read more »
By Ewa Chrusciel
Turkish smugglers caught him in the wild and trapped him in a veiled cage, hung in a cafe. Deprived of light, the goldfinch mourned, his song a prayer of lament. Sorrow breeds melodies. Pipe smoke wafted through the room. The men meditated; they puffed nostalgic rings into the air. The goldfinches’ plaintive song lingered and… Read more »
By Richard Hoffman
There’s a hole in this poem, a hole where all the usual ways I know to write a poem are stuffed to block the cold wind of the unexpected, a hole that allows the loud world to decide which portion of itself to poke through and require me to describe it or address it, a… Read more »
By Barbara Siegel Carlson
Not unafraid of the Taliban takeover. Waiting for what happens through the bars and veils. What about the whale that washed up on the private beach? They couldn’t find anyone to relieve them of the stench. Still we smiled at the red boots on the big furry dog, turned our heads away from the man… Read more »
By Brenda Sparks Prescott
This issue features an interview and a review about non-fiction books that reach across class and racial divides and witness the complications and consequences of inequality in America. We also offer a review of a poetry collection that crosses time and geography to explore the cultures and circumstances observed by a travelling poet. In Poetry… Read more »
By Melanie Brooks
When her memoir, The Book Keeper, launched on January 14, 2020, Julia McKenzie Munemo did not know that exactly two months later, when the lockdown began and the world shuttered against the Covid-19 pandemic, her book tour would come to an abrupt halt. Neither could she have anticipated that the deaths of three Black Americans—Breonna Taylor,… Read more »
By Richard Hoffman
Prosperity Gospel: Portraits of the Great Recession Keith Flynn & Charter Weeks REDHAWK PUBLICATIONS, 2021 In the Winter 2019 issue of Solstice, photographer Charter Weeks described the source of his work featured in our pages: “’The Prosperity Gospel’ is a project done in collaboration with the writer, Keith Flynn, documenting the effects of the… Read more »
By Barbara Siegel Carlson and Ewa Chrusciel
Adonis writes, “Poetry and the other arts seek a kind of progress that affirms difference, elation, movement and variety in life.” We can see this at play with spark and verve in the poets and translators we are delighted to bring to our pages: Małgorzata Lebda, Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese Astrid Cabral, Alexis Levitan and Boris Novak.… Read more »
By Małgorzata Lebda and Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese
translated from the Polish Elżbieta Wójcik-Leese fire: cleansing into the lid of a big jar father pours methylated spirits lets me set it on fire over the flame he singes the cold body of a duck heart or liver? he asks though he knows that mother will save the liver for me apparently thanks… Read more »
By Astrid Cabral and Alexis Levitin
translated from the Portuguese by Alexis Levitin Obstacle Because of poetry beans burn milk spills one forgets to change clothes go inside out the baby cries in hunger one misses the train. But one goes on. Who knows to where, to what anonymous cloud. With the Word, the Poem Don’t put another music… Read more »
By Boris A. Novak
translated from the Slovene by the author from THE DOORS OF NO RETURN (fragments from the epos) Book One: MAPS OF NOSTALGIA Notebook One: THE ADDRESS Canto Two: THE ANCESTRAL TREE 1 … I was a reflection on the quick mirror of the water, and I was a shadow on the running window… Read more »
By Elizabeth Searle
Former Fantasticks At silent 6AM, by the dawn’s early laptop light, I find them again: our stars. Onscreen, online– two fellow Thespians; two former Fantasticks. Blasts from my past. A boy and girl, then. And see, I’d loved, in my tortured teen way, both of them. I feel my fingers shake. Even now, in… Read more »
By Douglas Cole
She watched as the jury came in, watched with that dream detachment that sometimes comes to people when they are in the midst of life-changing moments whether they know it or not. She watched them take their seats, and in what almost seemed a rehearsed way, they all wore the same bland emotionless expression, if… Read more »
By Brenda Salinas Baker
This is a Mexican re-imagining of Rebecca. “Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.” Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca The morning of the funeral, I circled my childhood bedroom in a terry cloth robe. Pacing between the closet and… Read more »
By Angelo D'Amato
As the choir brings the psalm to life, Fr. Daniel taps one finger on the armrest, in time to the beat of his own impatience. Seeing Samuel squirm in Stacy’s arms, and seeing Stacy rock him, ever so slightly, and seeing Joseph tap his fingers and shift his feet and adjust his tie and look… Read more »
By Shamae Budd
The dirt road stretched out before him in the late afternoon sun, flat and taut like a ribbon wrapped around a present—but this day didn’t feel like much of a gift. He hated driving water trucks back and forth on these monotonous roads. He hated the mindless hours of fuzzy talk-show radio and sagebrush. Hell,… Read more »
By Nance Van Winckel
LYNN People without an app need a map, and Lynn just gave away her last map. Its legend shows a hotdog for a restaurant and a bed for a hotel. The map was in her glove box where she’d never in her life kept a glove. She’d gone to Valley Hardware, intent on buying what… Read more »
By Benjamin Selesnick
Reflections of the ceiling fan were captured in the shattered glass beneath the window frame. Dad was in the middle of the room holding a saucer identical to the one he’d just thrown on the floor. Mom was barely inside the doorframe, her legs were spread wide. She looked domineering, even though she was without… Read more »
By Richard Hoffman
Dear readers, As befits this moment deep in the pandemic, vulnerability and mortality loom large in the selection of essays here from across a wide spectrum of contemporary essayists. The writers here remind us that history need not dictate the future, whether it be the history of divisions among the African Diaspora or the God-addled,… Read more »
By Trisha M. Cowen
May 27, 2020 Today, we dig. Bees circle our heads and our hands, inspecting our movements in the grass, their grass. Ella, my fairy-like child, wants to plant a whole field of sunflowers on our front lawn. We have purchased a single pack of seeds. Perhaps it is too late in the season to plant… Read more »
By Dave King
“Oh, wow,” says my husband. “I blacked out.” He and I are sprawled on our bed; we’ve just had sex, and I’ve got my arm around him. “You dozed off,” I say. “Both of us did.” It’s the Monday after Pandemic Thanksgiving, a gray day in upstate New York. A kitty circles the bed, the… Read more »
By Baron Wormser
Author’s Note: All quotes are from the Modern Library College Edition published in 1981 and originally published in 1856 under the title, History of Plymouth Plantation. My title comes from a poem by Richard Michelson that is the title of his book published in 2015 by the University of Pittsburgh Press. As a résumé of… Read more »
By Jen Dupree
You’ve been having some trouble with your bowels, so we’re at the gastroenterologist’s office. The nurse leads us into an exam room and says, “Okay, just hop up on the table.” I laugh because I think she’s making a joke. It’s clear you can’t hop. If she looked closely, or looked at you at all,… Read more »
By Clara Bosak-Schroeder
I came to the Brooklyn Museum to see Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party but it was the work of Judith Scott that stopped me in my tracks. I do not like sculpture much, I do not know how to feel about it. My mother had died three years before and I was thinking of her when… Read more »
By Celeste Mohammed
I was initially surprised when the Solidarity Book Project, which is a social justice initiative of Amherst College, Massachusetts, invited me, a Trinidadian writer, to contribute to a communal monument to solidarity. However, when I read the Project’s espoused aim of pushing against legacies of anti-Black racism and settler colonialism, I had to concede the… Read more »
By Jane Shiau
In 2014, my parents announced they were leaving Massachusetts and retiring to California. I marched into my therapist’s office and flung myself onto the couch to cry. I couldn’t believe they were abandoning me. Worst of all, I told my therapist, was that now I was going to have to be an adult and buy… Read more »
By Lance F Mullins
I am a Christian minister who once spent the night with a sex worker named Adam. Although, to be technical about it, I was a first-year seminarian – not yet a card-carrying minister – when I spent the night with this sex worker. And since we’re being technical, I didn’t actually spend the night with… Read more »
By Jill Frances Johnson
We’d driven north for five hours straying off the highway to admire the countryside along billboard-free roads. I’d point to white houses with green trim, that one, like that, imagining a future when we’d own a house instead of renting. Thom’s new broadcaster’s license was in his pocket. One suitcase, orange crates of LP records… Read more »
By Robbie Gamble
We didn’t arrange for a week of travel in the south of Wales in order to trail in some literary wake of Dylan Thomas. Anna wanted to relive some of her travels during her university days at Cambridge, and she thought I would be thrilled with the opportunity to hike through rugged greening landscapes. But… Read more »
By Andrai Whitted
I’m grateful for the overwhelmingly positive response to our introduction of this genre in 2019 and continued growth in quantity and quality of submissions, including the amazing work featured in our 2021 Summer Contest Issue. Graphic Lit is such a versatile genre, and I get excited by the possibilities that the comic form allows. That’s… Read more »
By Richard Cambridge
Yesterday’s Noise: A Family Legacy of Rage and Radiance Joe Mackall, The Humble Essayist Press, Blairsville, GA, 152 pgs. To do justice reviewing Joe Mackall’s collection of essays, Yesterday’s Noise: A Family Legacy of Rage and Radiance, it’s helpful to consider “essay” as a verb: “To initiate an effort or experiment to prove something; to
By Will Horwath
ENDINGS & BEGINNINGS: FAMILY ESSAYS (MadHat Press, 2021) WH: First off, about your daughter Ruth, in Father of the Bride you say, “how glad I was to know her.” After having read Endings and Beginnings, I said the same about your family—your dad, mom, Dave, Chuck, Jack, Connie and the rest of the
By Lee Hope
To Stephen Dunn, In Memoriam We dedicate this Summer Contest Issue to Stephen Dunn, whose life on our earth ended on June 24, 2021. As many know, Stephen was a man of great gifts. His oeuvre includes twenty-one poetry collections and two essay collections, the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and countless other deserved accolades. In… Read more »
An Interview with DeWitt Henry about Endings & Beginnings: Family Essays
Note from the Founding Editor-in-Chief
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