The past three months have been a challenge.
I have been consumed with work, with family, and with promoting a quarter and special volume perhaps a bit beyond my abilities as a single human being. While I have been busy, I have felt outside of everything, stretched thin, and I have not been at home, even in my own skin.
This volume captures that, and is fittingly dubbed dépaysement , from the French term describing the feeling that comes from not being in one’s home country. Many of the pieces here explore an aspect of this feeling, but I will not guide you. There is no map now. No table of contents. Just stories. Read on, and let us share the aches, the worries, the fears, the strangeness, and the triumphs.
Table of Contents
“The Willow Switch” by Louis Rakovich
“Eczema’s Lover” by Irina Klishch
“512” by Owen Lucas
“Flan” by Tabitha Chirrick
“Basketball” by Michael Prihoda
“My Shadow” by Rebecca Harrison
“Time Collecting” by Anna Zumbro
“Purdies” by Shari J. Crane
“Bloody” by Zain Saeed
“This Ancient City” by Mark Antony Rossi
“Not Even One Grain of Sand Leads to the Final Question” by Rene Salinas
“Hibernacula” by D.S. West
“One Giant Leap For Clownkind” by J. Tyler Ruthven
“Marbles” by E.N. Loizis
“Gooseberry Jam” by Jennifer Todhunter
“The Price of Satisfaction” by Kathy Steinmann
“Chain Link Fence” by Robert Boucheron
“Dying in Maryland” by Philip Hanson
“Hotel Charlie Echo” by J.D. Kotzman
“Grounders” by Sarah Glady
“Tineola Bisselliella” by William B. Squirrel
“Lungs” by Tiffany McDaniel