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NER Classics

Jeff W. Bens | Golden Day

February 5, 2016

Jeff W. Bens’s story, Golden Day, appeared in NER 19.1 (1998).

Mrs. Cashman needed eighty-seven dollars and I was determined to help her get it.

“But you mustn’t give it to me, I won’t take it,” Mrs. Cashman said, her oversized, pearl-like necklace clanking against the edge of her third refill of coffee in our hotel’s delicatessen. “You mustn’t.” Mrs. Cashman was seventy-three. She hadn’t touched the third cup, but she would, as it was free, and coffee, though she’d never say this, killed the need for food.

“I don’t have it,” I said. Her gaze dropped from mine, into the coffee and the swirl of cream she’d poured in, the coffee white, and she brought the cup to her lips.

“It’s not for me,” she sipped, “but for Mr. Newcomb. He’s eighty-four years old.”

Mr. Newcomb lived on the eleventh floor, two above mine, beside Mrs. Cashman, though to hear her tell it he would soon have to move, “to a lower floor on account of his legs, what with the eleveators always busted; or maybe straight to the funeral parlor, cut out the middle men.” The one time I’d spoken with Mr. Newcomb, or rather he to me, he was sitting alone with a cigar in the Carlson’s lobby, staring into the wallpaper. He’d startled me, turning and meeting my eyes. “Cubano,” is all he’d said. And then he’d smiled and turned his attention back to the wall.

[read more]

Filed Under: NER Classics Tagged With: Golden Day, Jeff W. Bens, NER Classics

Mid-Week Break | A. Van Jordan Reads at Bread Loaf 2014

July 22, 2015

A. Van Jordan reads his poetry at the 2014 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference:

“Notes from a Southpaw” 

A. Van JorA. Van Jordandan is the author of Rise (Tia Chucha Press, 2001); M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A (W. W. Norton & Co., 2005), which was awarded an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award and listed as one of the Best Books of 2005 by the London Times, as well as Quantum Lyrics (2007) and The Cineaste, (W. W. Norton & Co., 2013). Jordan was also awarded a Whiting Writers Award, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, and a United States Artists Fellowship. He has served on the faculty of a number of institutions including The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, The University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Michigan. He is currently at Rutgers University–Newark as the Henry Rutgers Presidential Professor.

All Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference readings are available for free on iTunesU. Want to hear more? Visit the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference website.

Filed Under: Audio Tagged With: A Van Jordan, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

NER Classics | Experiences of the Void | David Guy

June 12, 2015

David Guy’s essay, “Experiences of the Void,” was published in NER 16.2 (1994):

When I look back on mBeyond Mechanics - Marendo Müllery beginnings as a writer, when I consider the question of what writing really is, I always bring to mind a place called the Pittsburgh Academy of Medicine, a society of physicians which met in a huge ancient house in a rundown part of the city, with an extensive medical library in the basement. My father was an officer in the organization, and had gotten my brother and me summer jobs there, dusting books or watching over the place while the regular librarian—an ex-lawyer and recovering alcoholic named Allen Lynch—was on vacation.
     The basement was huge, and filled with the kind of heavy glassed-in wooden bookcases that distinguished houses used to have in the early years of the century. The floor was a creaky hardwood, lined with rubber mats where you were supposed to walk. The building ran down a hill, so there were windows not only in the basement—high wide windows that let in plenty of light—but also in the sub-basement, a dank dark place with a cement floor and stone walls that housed some of the older books and also contained an extensive library on sex.

[read more]

Filed Under: NER Classics Tagged With: David Guy, Experiences of the Void, NER Classics

NER Classics | In the House of the Child | Ira Sadoff

June 5, 2015

Piano Silhouette Ira Sadoff’s story, “In the House of the Child,” appeared in NER 22.1 (2001):

I. Now the marriage bed is a nightmare: a king-size bed with a little prince in it. That’s how it feels: dark, even with the night light on in Randy’s private bedroom. Such a big house, with four bedrooms and a big deck opening out onto a field and a garden his wife had planted with flowers and herbs. He’s made a vow that no other woman will live there, live in their house. Just like that, his mind fills with dark thoughts. There are not enough magazines in the world to stop it. Not enough old movies. There are not enough bridge hands, there’s not enough golf to fill in the gulf when Randy’s sun Leo is at Quin’s apartment. Sleeping, except for dozing on and off somewhere between two and three in the morning, is out of the question. Quiet is his enemy. Even when Randy was a child, he couldn’t have enough noise in the house. Sometimes he did his homework listening to the radio with the TV on, and often he talked on the phone to whichever friend was sufficiently inert to listen. It worked. Why fix what’s not broken? Because now it was broken.

[read more]

Filed Under: NER Classics Tagged With: In the House of the Child, Ira Sadoff, NER Classics

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Volume 39, Number 4
Cover art by Emilia Dubicki

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Douglas Silver talks about his new story, “Borders and Crossings,” a captivating personal-political primer on US history from the switchboard of the White House.

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