Volume 1 Issue 1
This inaugural issue of Silk Road is a literary adventure. Come along... Claire Davis witnesses a 64,000 acre burn in Idaho and poet Marvin Bell says events, not places make the poem. "I can't write honest poetry if I feel like a tourist about the setting," he says. Artists in this Issue
Mary Alexandra Agner
Kelli Russell Agodon
Neil Aitken
Lana Hechtman Ayers
Marvin Bell
Ronda Broatch
Tracy Burkholder
Claire Davis
Suzanne Frischkorn
Thomas Hawk
Scott Hightower
Daniel M. Jaffe
Janet Norman Knox
Andrew Kozma
Jennifer Brown Lawrence
Natasha Kochicheril Moni
Dina Rubina
Stephen D. Schroeder
Mark Terrill
David Vincenti
Jeff Walt
Joe Wilkins
An excerpt from Big Charity
by Stephanie Dickinson
The baby and I floated in the red lake of the Mercury's back seat. Bluejay had tried to blanket her with a hand towel but each time the Marquis bounced over a crack in the highway, the lake sloshed, and her tiny fingers curled like flower stems. "Memory, how are you doing there?" Bluejays's voice reached for me. "Hang on darling we're almost to Charity." Charity Hospital. Girls from the ninth ward came here to have their babies. Grandma Lolie brought me to the emergency when I fell from the tulip tree. It was where the yardman Lionel went when he was shot over a game of dominoes. Big Charity, New Orleans' jewel since 1736.
There were so many traffic stops, red lights. He began running them. "Hang on, Mem. I';m going as fast as I can. I wont let you down."
But I didn't have to hang on; I was admiring her eyelashes, I'd never seen anything more beautiful. Her cheeks were pink and purple; my favorite colors, and wrinkled around the ears because she looked minutes and hundreds of years old at the same time. I kept sliding as I struggled to hold her. I loved her. It wasn't her fault she had been born in a hotel room...
You Are Here
by David Vincenti
See the city that laid flat, subway lines
Delivering men like blood to the blocks
that need their hands.
You are here.
See the mall stacked stories deep
with what you did not come here for,
acres of children acting grown
and grownups dressing young
and the promise of money
in every room.
You are here.
See the line of geologic time from
creatures large enough to lose us
in their toes through all the times the ice
crept in with its promise and its
dire predictions.
You are here.
See me, across this table wet
with short rib bones and spilled rosé
laughing too loud in a room
too fond of quiet.
You are here.
See me across this table.
You are here.