"Peacocks"

It's Saturday night. As Hurricane Irene continues up the coast and to New York, maybe it has already hit, I read this story that screams New York and feel nostalgia for a place I've never lived but always kind of wanted to.

Today's story, "Peacocks" by L.E. Miller is a good story from a good journal, Ascent. The point of view, which at first appears to be the collective "we" is also very interesting, but it later turns out that one women rather than all is narrating, telling the story for the group of them. The story, which is mostly set in the 1950s, begins: "We had values. We had Le Creuset pots. We had fold-out couches in our living rooms, where we slept with our husbands at night. "

The story describes the women in the story as "landsmen, all of us dark-haired women who carried the inflections of our parents’ Yiddish in our speech. Our cramped apartments were fine with us; we would never in a million years live in some bourgeois outpost in Long Island, and the only way we’d return to Brooklyn was in a coffin. We called ourselves The Quorum. We called ourselves the Collective Unconscious of the Upper West Side. " These women are mothers whose children play together "in a bleak little playground near the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine."

All of the women have something in common, but then a new woman moves in who doesn't seem to fit in. The other woman take satisfaction in their lives, but the new woman seems above them and apart from them. But is she really that different?


Like the narrator, do you see a little bit of yourself in Rebecca?

Two Stories

Today's story is really two stories--"Two Plumbers--A Love Story" and "Field Trip to the Last Museum." One of the stories is somewhat related to yesterday's post, which was a flash piece about a trip to a Civil War site.

Both of today's stories are by Lucas Southworth. Story one is a cute take on a classic story. Story two is a list.

These stories come from elimae, which stands for electronic literary magazine. It's been around since 1996. If you're not familiar with this journal, you should check it out.

Here's to another day of reading, writing, thinking, and discovering. Have you read or discovered anything that you'd like to share? Have you been enjoying this week's selections so far? I'd love to hear what you think.

"Some of Us Can Leave"

Today's featured story, "Some of Us Can Leave" by Sara Schaff is a recently published story from the Summer 2011 issue of Carve.

I chose this story because it grabbed my attention from the beginning, and it kept it. It begins with the lines, "People say your life flashes before your eyes right before you die, but it also happens when you find out you’re pregnant. And unemployed." That intrigued me. I wanted to know more about the situation and the narrator.

I also liked the story because I kept thinking about it after I had first read it, which obviously was recently, and I kept coming back to it.

Also, it may be that we're drawn to stories that speak to our life experiences in some way, and, as a mother, I can identify with the narrator. However, the narrator's life is also different from mine in many significant ways.

I also chose this story because I liked the way the writer used language. Her descriptions--like this one--were memorable: "I stare at his paunch. His beer gut is so rounded and taut that he looks like a woman starting her third trimester."

Here's the picture from the online cover of the 2011 summer issue of Carve. I hope you enjoy today's featured story.

Fences Fly By

Today's blog post, "Fences Fly By" focuses on a piece of flash fiction. Flash fiction is just another way of saying very short fiction. Depending on who is doing the defining, flash fiction is usually defined as fiction under 500 or 1000 words.

I picked today's piece because it a) contains some very nice writing and b) captures place well. Also, I admit it; I'm biased. The third reason I chose today's piece, by Salvatore Pane, is that it's set in Pittsburgh, which is where I'm from.

Today's piece is partially set at a restaurant in Bloomfield, which is on the East End of the city. Here's a picture of that restaurant, the Church Brew Works.



What do you think of today's piece? Does it grab you? Does it move you? Why, or why not?