How Do You Name a Hurricane?

August 2, 2022.Reading time 36 minutes.

By Amy Lee Scott

First, watch the storm gathering. On the map there is a bustle of white, so much like a twirling petticoat that spins faster and faster. When it gets big enough, the astronauts post photos. News outlets flash warnings. People clear supermarket shelves, hammer up boards, track down batteries. Outside, the wind thrashes.

***

Arthur. Bertha. Cristobal. And Dolly.

Use old names, like our grandparents’. Names that stick. That is why we began to name them: the old labels—just numbers—were not enough. We needed names to contain such catastrophes.

Why would anyone even live there? someone said after looking at photos of decimated islands. They are destroyed year after year.

We weren’t noticing the hurricanes. Here, we were scrolling and scrolling past black squares. Past Black faces:

George. Breonna. Ahmaud. The list went on.

***

Somewhere Outside of Loveland

December 13, 2019.Reading time 40 minutes.

by Amy Bee

Featured Art: “Design for 4-seat Phaeton,” by Brewster & Co.

My mom kicked me out this morning. If you’re still here by the time Doug gets home, I’m having you committed, she said, so I put on some jeans and ran to my old elementary school across the street. I headed toward the two tubes next to the monkey bars. I’d spent a lot of recesses in those coveted tubes. Now that I was in 8^th grade, the whole playground appeared fake somehow, like a toy model version of itself.

Promised Lands

November 12, 2019.Reading time 27 minutes.

By Christie Tate
Feature image: Sunset over a Pond, c. 1880 by François-Auguste Ravier

The first time I walked into Grandma’s church, I was a little girl in white Stride Rite leather sandals and a pale yellow dress with a sash. The First Baptist Church of Forreston, Texas. There was no parking lot, so Grandma, like a dozen others, steered her big blue Chevy off the road into the grass in front of the sign welcoming all worshippers.

The white clapboard building looked like the school-church from Little House on the Prairie. Simple wooden porch with four steps. Plain white steeple. Two long skinny windows. Our regular church in Dallas was three times larger, had bells that chimed every hour, and its thick walls held colorful stained glass depicting Jesus carrying the cross, falling, dying.

The Uber Diaries

October 2, 2019.Reading time 36 minutes.

by Kyle Minor
Essay originally published in New Ohio Review Issue 24
Featured Art: Evacuation by Corran Brownlee

Indianapolis, Indiana. Somewhere near Keystone Avenue and 62nd Street my iPhone pings. A college student from Hyderabad, India. He is pleased when I tell him he’s my first customer. He tips me two dollars.

I pick up my second customer in front of a bar in Broad Ripple. He gets in the front seat. His hair is grown to thigh length, and he is on some kind of party drug that makes him want to touch things.

“Please stop rubbing my arm,” I say. He apologizes.

Near Rocky Ripple, he takes off his shoes and socks and rubs his bare feet on the windshield.

His feet leave little rabbit marks. He is a large man with very tiny feet. When I drop him off at the donut shop, he doesn’t leave a tip. Read More

Holding On Is [ ]

June 14, 2019.Reading time 25 minutes.

by Kay Gram

Featured Art: “Cradle of Kleptocracy” by Madara Mason

[arms & legs]

Be my arms and legs. You’re strong. You can do it! Mom would say. Mom’s body was small, fragile, needed time to move, moved differently than other bodies. I always thought she was beautiful. She was—blonde, blue eyed, narrow nose, all symmetrical. Mom had a determined presence that demanded respect and she had mastered the performance of a Eurocentric female beauty. Outfits were planned, makeup was worn, perfume was sprayed. We were late to everything. Sometimes she fell down. Read More