ISSUE #4

Dwelling

Sally Tittmann, Untitled (#414), pencil on paper, 21" x 25", 2007. The editors would like to thank Sally for permission to share her work in issue 4. The editors would also like to thank Garth Evans for curating art for Speculative Nonfiction and introducing us to so many wonderful artists.

Table of Contents

Editor’s Comments

Program Slam / Kunlyna Tauch

One time I found all of my court transcripts (thousands of pages) shuffled like a deck of playing cards.

No Kind of Good Trouble / Shabrayle Setliff

I’m increasingly coming to understand the cost of survival. 

The House We Grew Up In / R.S. Powers

Our parents’ bedroom is a round mountain of old clothes. All the toilets are missing and we can’t imagine why.

At the Roebling Aqueduct, Alone / Melissa Holbrook Pierson

I brake, hard, for historic markers. I have yielded to genetic forces beyond my control: I have become my father.

Inventory / Tan Tuck Ming

When we ask if it is made in China we are asking if the object has a soul.

Out Line: A Proposal That Won't Be Accepted / Kristine Langley Mahler

I want access to the ditches snaking through the neighborhood. I will live out my fantasy of rafting through the drainage.

Boo Who? / Hannah Lund

Trying to hear inside the pauses, the silences that spoke volumes if you listened.

Hopkins House Condominium Association / Shou Jie Eng

Not every client is a lover. But in some way, all clients are lovers.

Int. / Ext. / Nathan Austin

Is there a word that means “homesick for someone else’s house”?

Replaying Doom / DeWitt Henry

We’re swept along. Point by point choices and actions blur in motion, like flip cards, or cells of movie film, or fragments into meaning.

Ghost / Mackenzie Epping

Birch leaves skitter the wind. Footprints break snow crust and ice and leave a trail of blue shadows.

Grilled Bananafish / David Stromberg

What I didn’t say, but what I kept thinking as we drove down to the beach, was that I didn’t like the idea that life imitated art.

A Thousand Nothings / Jenny Fran Davis

Bulk etiquette: no grazing—no shaking—bag it—tag it—prevent spillage. I feel diffusive, like a conduit, like a pipe under construction.

Persephone / Carson Pynes

Today is my birthday, and my father is showing me the newest beehive.

Speculations on the Field

Speculative Nonfiction as Practice in Disability Writing / Gwendolyn Paradice

If someone were to ask me what speculative nonfiction is, I would say it is a home, a safe space for my disability writing.