Like many other magazines in today’s surplus, The Sienese Shredder was destined for a short life. During its four years of operation, it may not have made a household name out of itself, but it managed to publish work from influential writers, such as John Ashbery, and artists, such as Willem de Kooning. I was initially drawn to this magazine based on the description of content. It claimed to publish not only art and literature, but also music by including CDs with each issue. The Sienese Shredder seemed to have the same ambitions every magazine is born from: the idea that it was capable of filing a gap in the world’s content.

In 2006, Brice Brown and Trevor Winkfield started the NYC-based magazine. There is little information on the magazine’s manifesto. Its website reads simply, “Each issue brings together poetry, critical writing, visual arts, unpublished rarities, oddball ephemera and other culturally significant material in a way that is exciting, contemporary and fresh.” Although I admire what the magazine set out to do, the website lacked luster even as a piece frozen in 2010’s aesthetic. Once the magazine started going under, the editors began an archival project making almost every issue available online. The website organizes material by artist name instead of by genre. There is something interesting about the blind browsing it imposes on the reader, but once a name is clicked on, multiple pieces appear from the initial list. It helped me find work from many people I may not have clicked on; however, this strategy also made me lose who I began with and what first interested me.

I felt as though I focused more on the art displayed than the words published. The art works had a Japanese vintage-esque flavor about them, and I could imagine how beautiful they would be in person. However, this was the extent of my admiration. It became very evident to me that the magazine itself was too eclectic and maybe even too Avant-garde for my taste. There were paintings of dog fights and toilet paper rolls alongside poems with experimental syntax that I had never seen before. As Brown and Winkfield’s expertise stem from art instead of creative writing, it is very possible that I, someone with no artistic training, just do not “get it.”

It is a magazine I might have never picked up, but I can imagine what it may have turned into if it was printing in 2018 instead of 2010. It may have found a better home among the postmodern readers today. There is no doubt The Sienese Shredder had a vision for itself and the place it would occupy in the literary world, but it is possible people were not ready for its niche. It is a testament to the power of audience. The magazine had important contributors within the pages, but as it was forced to compete on the streets of New York as so many other magazines must, it may have been overshadowed.

I am intrigued by the premise of this magazine, and I hope the editors continue the archive up to the final issue and display the work for as long as they are able. If the internet really is forever, then I hope it is used as free real estate to keep the work alive forever too.

Honesty? What does it mean? More importantly, what does it feel like? To me, it feels like Little Fiction and Big Truths. 

The moment I read the journal’s title, I felt inclined to click. Because to me, and I’m sure to many other young writers and editors, there is a constant search for truth, for individuality, and for honesty. And while those qualities may seem redundant, I don’t believe they are. To me, truth has never meant honesty. Truth feels like circumstance, and honesty feels like a state of mind–a raw emotion of that circumstance.

Little Fiction and Big Truths makes the truth feel honest.

Published the first Wednesday of every month, the stories and essays on the journal’s website are all unique and tailored perfectly. Tailored not for their audiences, but for the authors. Isn’t that what’s supposed to be important to an author? We write for ourselves: a concept that a lot of us struggle with while composing our stories into text.

Emily O’Neill’s “Do Nothing Unless It Feeds You” was the first piece that I read in Little Fiction and Big Truths. This essay explores Emily’s struggles with an eating disorder. “For me, food is a kind of anxiety,” Emily writes. “There is no table where I can sit without being afraid of what might happen. I talk too much when I go out for dinner, a kind of avoidance. I order more than I can take, a kind of insurance. It will be okay to stop before the plate is empty. It’s not a sign of relapse to not finish every bite. No one will make me eat the mistake, reheated, for breakfast. I will not cry.” As someone who has also suffered from the (seemingly) endless self-loathing and self-harm connected to this highly addictive disease, I appreciated how vulnerable she was on the page. Emily was a ballerina, Emily wanted to be loved, Emily wanted help and didn’t know how to ask for it. Emily was me. 

A common misconception about eating disorders: we do it because we think we’re fat. Maybe that’s the truth most of the time, but it sure as hell isn’t the honest answer. We do it because we hurt. We do it because we are too afraid to take the next step in self harm, and we believe everyone prefers the skinny girl over the less-invisible forms of self-harm, ones that will eventually line the curves of the hidden portion of our thighs. We don’t all do it because we’re fat or feel fat. We do it because we’re really fucking sad and nobody noticed. “But even if you couldn’t see the sick,” Emily writes, “it was everywhere, migraines needling my eye sockets.” Her pain wasn’t just for print. It was real.

Writing about our painful experiences shouldn’t necessarily be painful, and reading about painful experiences shouldn’t have to be painful either. It should, or could, be cathartic and beautiful, like our humanity and desire to tell the story. That’s something I truly believe Little Fiction and Big Truths understands and portrays through its selection of works. Each piece holds its own home as an icon on your screen as you scroll down the “collections” tab. A little picture or clip art is attached to the piece, as a way to your draw attention to the stories and essays.  To feel even closer to the authors, you can access some of their writing playlists, as well as the authors’ descriptions of how the songs helped. The site links to the songs on Spotify. The opportunity to listen to the songs, while reading the stories, helped me feel closer to the author and the story. This, to me, keeps the writing process honest. I hate to admit my naiveté, and possible ignorance to the craft, but I always imagined that authors sat down at their computer one day and wrote a masterpiece—probably with coffee in hand and their cat weaving in between their legs. Little Fiction and Big Truths brought the process to life, and I was not only closer to learning the story of the author, but a step closer to understanding the reality of the literary world—honest and welcoming.

Refreshing.

Little Fiction and Big Truths is one of the few literary magazines where I can feel the soul and passion behind the words on the screen. The site isn’t too flashy, because it doesn’t need to be— it doesn’t change the beautiful stories that are being told through their online platform. Art should never be forced. Stories shouldn’t be told because they will get the most clicks, views, or shares, but because the story needs to be told. And I don’t mean the version that our shame has been edited out of, but the real story, the honest story. The story that makes us cry on our keyboard as we type the words, feeling each one over and over again. The best stories break hearts, and, ironically, they sometimes mend them too. Thank you, Little Fiction and Big Truth: for the little fiction, and the big truths.

I knew that I needed to read Fence from the moment that I saw its bright pink cover. I thought it was eccentric and intriguing, and that is exactly what the Spring/Winter 2015 issue of Fence is, from cover to cover.  The front cover features a poem called “Front and Pearl” in all white text. The poem’s surreal lines capture Fence‘s experimental feel. One of the stanza’s reads: “She was the lemon target of reality. / Here, I’ll do the butcher. / Yes, the sun has officially set / until tomorrow. / The cathedral had an unfinished look to it.” An “unfinished look to it” is how I’d describe my favorite poetry. It’s also how I’d describe a lot of the poetry in Fence.

Fence publishes biannually, and its mission is “to maintain a dedicated venue for writing and art that bears the clear variant mark of the individual’s response to their context; and to make that venue accessible to as many, and as widely, as possible so that this work can reach others, that they may be fully aware of how much is possible in writing and art.”

This volume of Fence gives the reader a bit of everything. The table of contents is divided into “poetry,” “fiction,” and “other.” The poetry ranges from short, more-traditional love poems (“Because an Imitation is Almost as Good as the Real Thing” by Charles Olson) to longer prose poetry (“Multiply” by Wendy S. Walters) to some of the most experimental poetry that I have ever encountered (Andrea Actis’s “C-Span Lean Cuisine” and Ben Doller’s “Lancanian Inc.”). One of the fiction pieces that stood out to me was Kristen Gleason’s “Armand.”  I also enjoyed pieces in the “other” section, such as Julie Carr’s “Real Life: An Installation” and Laylage Courie’s “Lost Films of Theda Bara.” Carr’s piece is just that, a narrated art installation, and Courie’s is a narration of scenes from the author’s favorite Theda Bara films. And the poem on the back cover, “Rambling Statement,” has two of my favorite lines of poetry: “He suffered a long time ago, / and he will love you forever.”

The front and back covers proved to be a bold and memorable introduction and conclusion, respectively, to a magazine that challenges the reader to embrace new and emerging kinds of poetry. Fence‘s poetry is how I like poetry to be: beautiful and raw.

Some of my favorites from Volume 30:

“A Blowjob Titled “Givenchy,”‘ Lara Mimosa Montes

“Good Luck,” Alen Hamza

“Field Notes,” Rick Snyder

“My Penis Has Given You Up,” Drew Kalbach

“Inverse Heaven Division One,” Ish Klein

“Astrophysical Mass,” Rick Moody

I always looked forward to the number candle placed atop my birthday cake. The years without it always left me with a twinge of disappointment. Sadly, individual memories of birthdays and cakes and candles from childhood have begun to dissolve; however, the memory of loving this one type of candle stays concrete.

Nostalgia came swarming as I clicked the “issues” tab on the GlitterMOB website where 11 different colored, patterned, and numbered candles appeared—each candle to represent an issue of this eccentric online magazine. The pastel candied border, hot pink glittering cover photo, and abstract art will capture your attention before you even reach the content. GlitterMOB brings fun and flashy to a world not always described as so.

Instantly consumed by the appearance of the website, I wanted to find out more—more about the editors’ inspiration, how they started GlitterMOB, anything really. The magazine is published three times per year with no apparent stipulations on the type of content they desire. Other than that, I was left with mystery. Hidden among all of the bling appears to be a sense of simplicity. The “about” page is home to a quaint list of four editors and two past readers. If you stay on the page long enough, you’ll notice tiny hearts flash colors of the rainbow as they float from the top of the page down.

Not only have creators blanketed who they are but also what they wish the magazine to be.

Even Google didn’t have answers for me, but I liked the mystery.

I traveled to the homepage to explore GlitterMOB’s 11th issue. Twelve tiles filled with different illustrations act as the face of each literary piece. I must admit to “judging a book by its cover” when it came to deciding which piece to read first. I was drawn to an unconventional watercolor-like illustration of a bare woman with short dark hair. I noticed her holding her breasts, and then I took in her black eye, bandaged legs, and discolored skin. I clicked the illustration and it brought me to “Luxury, II” by Bailey Pittenger.

She wrote about dreams…

You know those bizarre dreams you simply have to tell your friends about? When I have these dreams, I share them with my best friend. She is someone who experiences far more bizarre dreams, and hence has a lot more to share than I do. Our exchanges are very uniform. The first response is usually an “Omfg!!! That’s so weird.” Then, as the conversation unfolds, we pick apart each other’s dreams until we can identify parts of our life that are being mirrored—things we’ve been stressing about, recent experiences, new happenings now surfacing in our dream state.

“Luxury, II” does just that. Pittenger uniquely depicts a conversation between her and a friend who have recently experienced odd dreams. “She says I must have dreamed my dream,” Pittenger writes, “because the sound of a chainsaw somehow reminds me that the sound of foam exiting a can is how the sound of making out is narrated.” I couldn’t help but feel I was reading my own lived experience but in a much more artistic and manicured way.

From one click to the next, my mind was consumed by poems that required me to step out of my comfort zone. My little knowledge of poetry especially influenced a feeling of misunderstanding, as if I’d missed something in each intricately crafted work.

In a world that has to know everything, GlitterMOB‘s reticence is refreshing. The editors don’t have to paste their mission statement to the “about” page—because everything you need to know about GlitterMOB can be found through the telling content and design.

I like the mystery of the glitterature. I like the mystery of it all.

I have often said that I think that literary magazines are very indicative of their time. I enjoy reading old issues and have been known to grab many at a time from The Book Thing of Baltimore. I recently read the summer 2008 “No Way Home: Outsiders and Outcasts” edition of The Virginia Quarterly Review and found it highly interesting, because it felt so ahead of its time. In the summer of 2008, there had not yet been a #MeToo Movement or a Women’s March or even an #OscarsSoWhite. People just weren’t paying as much attention to diversity and inclusion as they are now.

That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when I opened up this old edition of VQR and found an entire section dedicated to poetry by Israeli and Palestinian writers. The poems in this section of the magazine, titled “A Rose from Jericho,” are testaments to the strength and resilience of people whose voices are not often heard, at least in American culture. In “The Time Is Over,” poet Nidaa Khoury writes, “…and I, too, forget to tell him / that these people, in this country, / every day, / are dying.” While this poem talks bluntly about death, other poems in this issue are even more difficult to read because of their gory, vivid descriptions.

I notice that the word “blood” appears more than any other word in all of the poems. I think that is exactly why this is a highly commendable edition of VQR; instead of recoiling from controversy, VQR brings a sense of humanity to the Israeli-Palestine conflict. The poetry offers readers an opportunity to understand (from a more human, less newscast point of view) what is actually going on overseas. These poems confront what many of us don’t even know how to talk about. For me, personally, reading these poems was the first time I felt like I even somewhat grasped what was going on. The conflict always deeply confused me, and seemed so nuanced, so I never fully understood. I feel like I am finally beginning to. Maybe I still don’t understand the long, complicated history of these feuding countries, but I can empathize with the grief of those affected. In her poem, “Listen, Tonight,” Nathalie Handal puts the conflict into human terms that I can understand: “and answer me why we pretended / when we measured the earth / there was no space for both of us.”

In addition to “A Rose from Jericho,” there are also many other important voices in this issue. There are stories, or what VQR calls “dispatches,” from Bulgaria, Iraq, India, and elsewhere. Even closer to home, there are dispatches from the Mississippi coast post-Katrina and Alabama. Each dispatch gives a platform to those who do not often get to be heard. From victims of war and natural disasters to stories about dealing with white supremacists, this journal does not shy away from any topic.

What VQR did in 2008 is something other literary journals still seem to have trouble doing today: promoting inclusivity by representing a multitude of different voices. Because believe it or not, white men are not the only people who can write good poems.

Losing my best friend after high school was a significant moment in my life. We had been friends since the second grade. We knew each other inside and out. I confided in her, and she confided in me. We were more than best friends. We were sisters. Losing her was like losing a close family member. If you’re wondering: no, she did not die. People simply change. They distance themselves or grow away from the people they are close to. I was hurt, but it’s a part of life. Looking through a pile of scattered magazines on a table, I was drawn to one that had a sincere photo of two young girls embracing each other in a serene, open field. They possessed different body compositions and were clothed in very different bathing suit designs.  The magazine reminded me of that past friendship. Instantly, I picked it up. For the first time, I was face to face with the thirty-sixth issue of Cabinet magazine entitled “Friendship.”

Opening its pages, I was expecting the theme of friendship to run consistently throughout the publication. Instead, I was met with an eclectic assortment of works. Themes such as food, death, the significance of detritus, movement theory, taxidermy, and the act of judgment were flooding its pages. What was disorienting at first drew me further into the issue. As a reader, my curiosity was ignited. It was evident that the purpose of Cabinet as a literary magazine was to dismantle any previous thoughts about what a literary magazine should be. The works were meant to explore obscure aspects of our culture.

One of the featured works, “Leftovers: Where do Teeth Go?” by Helen Denise Polson, explored the cultural significance of tooth decay and its relation to the folklore of the tooth fairy. As a child, I remember losing my tooth in a tootsie roll on Halloween night. Imagine pulling a bloody tootsie roll out of your mouth with a tooth protruding from it. Needless to say, I did not eat tootsie rolls for a couple years after. But, I cannot deny that I was super excited for the tooth fairy to come that night. Polson’s article made me relive that experience. Did I ever think I would ponder the tooth fairy or why my parents used her as an excuse to collect my fallen teeth as a child? The answer is a hard no. But, I can proudly say that I read every bit of Polson’s article and she gave me knowledge on a topic I didn’t know I needed. I was fascinated. The photos published alongside the article—a vintage picture of a dentist examining a girl’s teeth, George Washington’s dentures, and milk teeth—were eye-catching and helped to capture my interest.

This issue of Cabinet was divided into three sections, the third being the section where the theme of friendship made its debut. A photo series that followed two young girls who grew up together as best friends, an interview about the literary accounts of friendship by great philosophers, and typed instructions about how to erase a former friend were all creatively used within this section to give a serious, yet humorous context to the exploration of friendship. The content in this issue is an intimate reflection of the nature of friendships within our social culture. In a featured work, “Scenography of Friendship” by Svetlana Boym, the reader is taken on a voyage through the different stories contained within one friendship between a political thinker, Hannah Arendt, and political journalist, Mary McCarthy. It gives an intimate and relatable scope of what friendships can endure. Boym even admits that since she was writing for Cabinet, she researched and ate anchovies because Arendt rejected anchovy paste from McCarthy in one of their stories. This was a comical and genuine touch that led me to relate to the definition of friendship she was defining. Throughout the other featured works, I was able to gain what I needed from the issue. I related to the publication in terms of what it means to have a friendship and what it means to lose one. Within this issue, Cabinet does its job as a literary magazine. It provides the reader with what they want to read while giving them content that they never knew they craved. It was a beautiful compilation of obscure, eclectic, and relatable content worth discovering.

McClure’s Magazine is a defunct literary magazine that ran from 1893 to 1929.  It was very highly regarded and influential during its time, commonly known for “launching the ‘muckraking’ era in American journalism” (The Modernist Journal Project).  Muckraking, an act of publishing pieces that speak out against social and political injustices, began with Lincoln Steffens in McClure’s.  His article, “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” “exposed how city officials worked in league with big business to maintain power while corrupting the public treasury” (US History).  This new kind of investigative journalism sparked people’s interest in McClure’s, allowing it to flourish during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

I chose a volume at random to look through, and was surprised to see that William Howard Taft, the 27^th President of the United States, was published in volume 33, no. 1.  He had not yet been inaugurated when the piece was written, but it was nevertheless a clever way to draw people’s attention to the magazine upon its release in May of 1909.  The cover’s bright colors and cheery illustration also contribute to its appeal, because it definitely made me more interested in its contents.  The artwork on the front is of a beautiful woman with a rose in her hair, caring for a bird in a cage outside of her window.  There’s an abundance of flowers and plants framing her, and a cat sitting on the sill watching a bird fly by.  This simple yet serene scene is entrancing, yet it is worth noting that there is not much of an association between the cover and the rest of the magazine.  With pieces like “Tammany’s Control of New York by Professional Criminals” and “What We Know About Cancer,” how is one to see a connection between what is initially seen on the front versus what we read on the inside?

A good portion of the magazine is advertisements, everything from chocolate to pianos to Tiffany & Co. jewelry.  I’m assuming literary magazines were more mainstream in 1909 than they are now, so advertisers would pay a lot more to gain a spot.  I don’t necessarily mind the abundance of advertisements though, because it allows us a glimpse into what the world was like at the time of this issue’s publication.  $2,250 for a new car?  $9.50 for a revolver?  $15 for a typewriter?  What a world it must have been.

All the pieces are incredibly long-winded and hard to read.  There are dozens of pages with nothing but text; however, some works are broken up with penciled illustrations or black and white photographs of old white men posing with their walking canes and encyclopedias.  Although I couldn’t imagine reading any of these pieces for fun (ever), it’s fascinating to think of the influence McClure’s had on the social climate of its time.  There is power in the ability to write freely about one’s concerns, especially when it comes to things that can’t be overcome without large numbers of people.

McClure’s magazine is an excellent example of a literary magazine that fulfilled its purpose and then expired when the time came.  It allowed readers to broaden their perspectives and learn to never blindly trust someone just because they are in position of power.  This magazine set the standard for many literary magazines to follow, and truly invented a new era of investigative journalism that gave political and social critics a platform to speak their truths.

As someone new to the world of literary magazines, I found T. S. Eliot’s “The Idea of the Literary Review” to be a helpful first reading to set guidelines and give warnings for the creation of a literary magazine. Eliot sets clear (although loftily worded) standards for literary magazines to follow, warning those who work on them away from extremes and encouraging them to find good balance in the level and content of the contributions to the magazine. The selection should not be so wide it seems arbitrary or so narrow that only one idea or point of view is represented. It should also not be so general that it seems to include just any contribution or so strictly “literary” that it destroys the life of the literature itself, making it inaccessible to the readers.

Basically, a literary magazine needs clear direction.

A passion for the work and literature is not enough on its own—the mission and goals of the magazine need to be clearly defined to make a cohesive, enjoyable, and lasting publication. This is something that would be good for everyone at Grub Street to keep in mind as we work toward creating our own volume. Eliot also makes good points as he discusses how literary magazines should not take a specific stand on social, political, or theological matters and should instead provide works of unknown and well-read authors alike with different backgrounds and opinions. However, I disagree when he suggests avoiding pieces with subjects of “political and economic controversy” altogether. That may have worked when he was an editor, but that is no longer sound advice and may not even be possible. In today’s society, nearly all writings are political regardless of intention. I feel that in trying to keep politics and other strong ideas completely out of the magazine we would be falling into another mistake Eliot warns of by separating the literature too far from the real world to be relevant.

by Abby Gauthier, 2018-19 Social Media Director

Just on the edge of some gold-tinged cluster of birches, the title appears in condensed, white font: The Alaska Quarterly Review. This edition, Volume 32, Issue No. 1 and 2, features a cover that seems relevant to the journal’s name: bare trees, packed snow, thickets of shrubs, barrenness. This is what I think of, perhaps stereotypically, when I think of Alaska. However, when I opened this edition at a random page, I was met with the denim-blue eyes of a young Palestinian girl. Her hands are cupped in front of her as if she’s holding a secret she doesn’t want me to see. The caption of the photo reads: “A Palestinian girl recites verses from the Qura’an at a mosque in Gaza City. 2009.”

It is part of a special feature, “Gaza: The Land Behind the Fence,” by Palestinian photojournalist Eman Mohammed. What follows are images of airstrikes, rubble, masked militants, children huddled in refugee camps, fearful mothers and fathers, the Palestinian Flag held high. These heart-wrenching photographs are from the 2008-09 war between Israel and Palestine in the Gaza Strip. This struck me, not only because I had falsely assumed that The Alaska Quarterly Review would focus on content surrounding Alaska, but because of the intense emotion and feeling in these pictures of scared children and dead children and mourning widows. The photo essay tugged at me before I even read a word.

As I flipped through the pages, my thumb landed on a poem about a river, a short piece that I found myself reading multiple times. It was called “River in August” by Candace Black. Maybe it was the language, the satisfying, repetitive “el” sound that made me feel as if I was rolling my tongue as I read. Maybe it was the intense, descriptive imagery about a river and its changes throughout the seasons that dropped my core temperature and reheated it again. Maybe it was the structure, the short, choppy sentences that still seemed to flow and melt together like warm river currents. I think it was a combination of all three characteristics of this short poem that made it one of my favorites in this edition.

While I prefer more color in a literary journal (something to differentiate it from a standard novel or textbook), I enjoyed this edition of The Alaska Quarterly Review. The pieces were accessible; nothing distracted away from them. Your attention was all theirs. I would like to continue working my way through Volume 32 of The Alaska Quarterly Review; I can already say, from Mohammed’s captivating photo journal and Black’s sensory poem, that it is a journal worthy of its standing.

I find it embarrassingly important to note that I have not had a lot of lit mag experience—and by a lot, I mean zero. But for only twelve dollars, an era of ignorance met its end. The twenty-third issue of A Public Space marked my first dive into the dating pool of literary magazines.

The salmon pink and reddish orange issue matched my brand new cat-eye sunglasses and manicure perfectly. I took it as a sign that it was meant to find my palms. I flipped through the soft off-white pages full of literature and art.

The publication has a refined, minimalistic, “MOMA” feel—like a small museum you could hold in your hands, curated by intellectuals who I imagine wear primarily black fabrics that sway when they do. What a fashionable discovery.

It’s always nice when your first has the maturity to keep it classy.

Not one shallow enough to fall in love based on looks alone, I browsed the table of contents, searching for an appropriate location where we could sit quietly together, and I could observe the personality behind the sophistication—page ten, Kathleen Collins’s “Husband.” My first official date.

“…It’s a long improvisation, my life…I don’t know many musicians who could come up with the variations I have… like a poet with a third eye for the way the wind blows… I put my token in the great subway train and went for a ride. I’m a moody son of a bitch.”

In the five pages of the story, only about seven sentences ended with periods. The rest, a continuous stream of thought, was broken up by ellipses. The piece was gruff, whimsical, didn’t follow the rules, and left me confused at the end—but in the good way where you want more because of the mystery of it all. Precisely how I’d categorize a perfect first date.

Later that night, through Elisabetta Rasy’s short story “The Truck,” I rode in a truck with a “distinguished yet impoverished man.” He was on the way to pursue an old flame, motivated by a pleasantly unexpected letter expressing that she still thought about him even after so much time had passed between the two. We hitched a ride from a “young guy with a pleasant face.” Sparse, awkward conversation filled the silences as we jerked through desolate highways late in the night. The man suggested music from his own tapes that he had brought. The driver declined and insisted on cassettes of his own that he would rather play. I sat in the rattling truck blindly, having little idea of exactly where we would end up at the ride’s end.  After a sketchy stop at a gas station, uncomfortable conversation quickly escalated to a high-speed chase. Our truck tailed a white mini driven by a young woman (someone the driver spotted leaving the small store attached to the service station). I wasn’t sure why. It all happened so quickly and menacingly in the dark.  Our vehicle crashed against a guardrail. We dodged glass and fire and the unlucky fate given to the now lifeless truck driver. The woman driving the white mini pulled us from the wreck and escorted us to her vehicle, noting, “there is nothing that can be done here, and you certainly are not a reliable witness.” I ended the night still as a passenger but in a new vehicle, leaving behind the scene of total devastation, hurtling into the darkness with a new driver and utter confusion and angst—a startling experience for a brand new relationship, and so early on in its stages.

I will certainly see A Public Space again.

I must like my magazines like I prefer my men: sort of intimidating, smart in the mind and dress, daring, rebellious, unafraid to take me on random and somewhat terrifying adventures, and always, always, with a good story to tell. I’ll be theirs for life (in an open relationship, of course).