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The Little Square

A Perfect Moment

An intuitive decision, a trip to the park, a confluence of yellow

Stones: A Love Story

When Izzy gets to the boardwalk, she thinks about turning back. Maybe he won’t remember her, maybe he’s forgotten it all.

The Fence Posts

Visiting my hometown of Daruvar, Croatia, in 1986, I was taken aback when a friend told me, “Go back to the States! We’ll have a war here. Serbs have lists of all the Croatian households. At night they will slit our throats.” I thought he was crazy. Now I think I was crazy not to see the warning signs.

Attics

Ninety clear glass marbles, a suicide note, a deathbed confession

This Life, This Word Unsaid

Freedom’s Just Another Word

I meet with Mikhail Bazankov, a Russian novelist, who tells me the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been a mixed blessing for writers. With the Russian economy in shambles, he explains, it’s difficult to get books published and distributed.

Sunbeams

Maybe journey is not so much a journey ahead, or a journey into space, but a journey into presence. The farthest place on earth to journey is into the presence of the person nearest to you.

Nelle Morton

Selected Poems

Disappearances

My father died on a July day in Phoenix. When he was found, his temperature was 108. The medical examiner’s certificate listed the cause of death as hyperthermia.