Waxing and Waning
Waxing and Waninga memoir by Colin Campbell I fled my toxic situation in Detroit in October 1975 by taking a ten-day bus ride to Santa Barbara where my brother Scott lived. When I arrived I called him from the pay phone at the Greyhound station: “I’m here,” I said. Scott and I […]
We Are Here To Heal You
We Are Here To Heal Youby Colin Campbell “We are here to heal you.” The voice was loud enough to make the windows shake. The noise woke up Mary Whitlow. It was just dawn, Mary saw, and she wondered if she’d dreamed it. She hadn’t been sleeping very well since the accident that […]
Instructions to Forgive
Instructions to forgiveA poem by Cesar Verrier First, remember. It is a painful task. Be gentle with yourself. Write down your recollections. You can’t forgive what you refuse to remember. Start your excursion into memory before you were so cruelly treated. Recapture what your life was like then and what you were like, too. Reconstruct […]
Love Renewed
Love Renewedby Irene Solovij Talk to me in love words Breathe your sweet breath into my soul Touch my skin until I can’t bear the fire Then consume me in the flames Whisper stories of the battles Once fought with tears and pain Now how they lay at our feet Never to rise again […]
The Lost Bicycle
The Lost Bicycle a story by Irene Solovij Walking down a well-trodden and favored trail of many years, Tristan reveled in the sights and sounds surrounding him. He breathed deeply and relished the damp, mossy, odor so prevalent this early part of the day. In a few more hours, the sun would be strong enough […]
Five Poems
Seven Poemsby Julia Lee The Righteous Fire When California’s warm winters become a sin,Shrubs, thorns, and fallen leaves only add to the blame.The wind is cursed as an accomplice,While red-legged frogs and fish remain the last fig leaf of environmentalism. The burning that captivates the world—Whose heart does it truly scorch?The sharpest bullet can traverse […]
The Singularity
The Singularityan essay by Colin Campbell Last Sunday on X, Elon Musk spoke about the Singularity. The entirety of his post: “We are on the event horizon of the Singularity.” Us sci-fi geeks knew exactly what he meant: a reference to Vernor Vinge’s 1993 paper, “The Coming Technological Singularity.” The term […]
Woodward Strip Women
Woodward Strip WomenA memoir by Colin Campbell After I quit the copywriter job at the Sears advertising department, my girlfriend Rhonda and I lived in a nudist commune on an island in Lake Orion. She’d been a copywriter at Sears, too, a beautiful recent college graduate with an IQ of 162. She and […]
My First Writing Job
My First Writing Joba memoir by Colin Campbell In late August 1967, I was reduced to living in my broken-down Buick Special at the site of a farmhouse in rural Michigan that had burned down and was now a secluded Lover’s Lane. I was 20 years old. It was the summer of the […]
The Technology of Text
The Technology of Textan essay by Colin Campbell Back when history began, writing was a secret for a small inner circle of kings and priests and tax collectors. Then a sudden technological advance let ordinary people convert text into audible speech. It was 2,700 years ago, and Greece was just another grubby little […]