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A Public Space

No. 05

Cattle Haul: the debut of Jesmyn Ward; Leslie Jamison reads Vladimir Propp; Ian Chillag on Kurt Vonnegut; Zoe Ferraris listens in on the secret phone calls of Saudi women; Lucy Begg illustrates Richard Linklater's treehouse; Peter Trachtenberg on narratives of suffering; Steve Featherstone's photographs from Afghanistan; stories by James Lasdun, Wells Tower, and Ernst Weiss; poems by Fanny Howe, Caroline Knox, Andrew McCord, Kevin Young, and more.

Table of Contents



 

If You See Something

At-Talifoon

Just after the first Gulf War, I moved to Jeddah with my husband.

Zoe Ferraris


 

If You See Something

Shark Means Knife

The story goes that as a child my mother finished a book every day.

Ian Chillag


 

If You See Something

Off the Pages and Onto the Sidewalk

Ten p.m. in Shimokitazawa, a neighborhood of circuitous alleyways ten minutes or so west of central Tokyo by train.

Roland Kelts


 

If You See Something

The Revenge of the Angry Black Artist

Years ago, when I was a Disney Screenwriting Fellow (a program that evolved out of the need for Disney never again to be dead last in employing women and writers of color, probably more out of corporate embarrassment than enlightened self interest), I had the thankless task, they didn’t even own the rights, of adapting Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.

Jervey Tervalon


 

Fiction

The Rat Ship

If I am to explain how, because of my father, I became the person I am, I must begin with the story of my father, with the man who had a determining influence on my youth.

Ernst Weiss


 

Poetry

The High Window

These long white days / Have gone by with no recording.

Fanny Howe


 

Poetry

The Detour Across the Delaware

Inebriating. We’re inebriating. Seasons are / clay windows, we climb through them / all radiant.

​Tomaž Šalamun


 

Poetry

I Don’t Burn

Dear Darkness—consider this / my last attempt / to reach you.

Kevin Young


 

Poetry

The Ghost of Edna Lieberman

They visit you in the darkest hour / all of your lost loves.

Roberto Bolaño


 

Poetry

Two Poems

Renunciation / is an evolved form / of desire

Pam Rehm


 

Poetry

Two Poems

I packed up the books

Caroline Knox


 

Poetry

Cure

It’s five o’clock, we’re walking in the sun / Down an over-wide, under-ridden road

​Andrew McCord


 

Poetry

Two Poems

The pieces that broke off the Song Dynasty / horse as it was crated from Hong / Kong to Norfolk

Angie Yuan


 

Poetry

Slow Demolition, Huron and State

The plaster / will come down in blue dust / with these hoses turned upon it / and the sun in its house

​Aaron McCollough


 

Poetry

The Virtues of Birds

Two birds came upon a crust of bread lying on the path through the woods.

Craig Morgan Teicher


 

Poetry

De La Rue’s Envelope Machine

With output of twenty-seven hundred envelopes an hour where prior but three thousand were made a day, cry when you consider the empty envelopes piled on each of our desks

Robyn Schiff


 

Fiction

The Old Man

The two women appeared in Conrad’s office late one afternoon in March.

James Lasdun


 

Feature

Field Notes from a Treehouse

"Do not worry if you have built castles in the air . . . that is where they should be . . . now put the foundations under them . . ." —Henry David Thoreau

Lucy Begg


 

Fiction

Door in Your Eye

That first evening in my new city, I had a phone call from my father, wanting to know how I was getting on.

Wells Tower


 

Fiction

Cattle Haul

It’s easier driving through the country, especially when you doing a cattle haul.

Jesmyn Ward


 

Feature

Secessionville

There is a tiny Southerner inside me.

Samantha Hunt


 

Feature

Heads Up: Military Graffiti in Kuwait and Afghanistsan

Last July, I was stranded for a week at Camp Ali Al Salem, a U.S. military base in Kuwait.

Steve Featherstone


 

Fiction

Lessons for a Dead Hare

In one of the texts in The Notebook of Things that Are Difficult to Explain, the blind poet speaks of a certain event that took place in an institution known as the Last Citadel.

Mario Bellatin


 

Feature

Morphology of the Hit

We begin with the first function.

Leslie Jamison


 

Feature

The Grief Work

“All his life Peter was afraid of flying,” Sally Goodrich said.

Peter Trachtenberg

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