By Jennifer Niesslein
It’s that time again, when editors across the land reread what they’ve published in the last year, then drive themselves bonkers trying to compare all the apples and oranges and figs and molten lava cakes and palak paneers and potato salads and bánh baos they published in the last year. Editors of small presses get six nominations for each year’s Pushcart Prize, and I take it seriously.
I’m excited to present FGP’s Pushcart nominees for this year.
Laura Giovanelli’s “The Size of a Memory, the Size of a Heart”
I am going to be a mother, and all I can think about is my father.
Jody Mace’s “Schrödinger’s Horn”
It seems like there’s only one right answer. I have to keep him safe. But it’s so much more complicated. It’s difficult to know at any given moment if he should no longer be doing something he used to be able to handle.
My wife left the appointment satisfied with the pediatrician’s explanation—seizures left her mind—and ready to ignore our daughter’s future fist clenching scenes and moments of rage when they should start to appear. I, on the other hand, was distraught; I knew that the pediatrician didn’t have the full story and neither did my wife.
Catherine Newman’s “Just. Don’t.”
Something is wrong with me, only I don’t know what it is. Or how to fix it. In the middle of the day or night, rage fizzes up inside my ribcage. It burns and unspools, as berserk and sulfuric as those black-snake fireworks from childhood: one tiny pellet, with seemingly infinite potential to create dark matter—dark matter that’s kind of like a magic serpent and kind of like a giant ash turd. This is how it is for me right now.
I felt her papery lips kiss me on both cheeks and sensed in her touch both excitement and trepidation as if she couldn’t believe she had crossed the ocean to visit her daughter in America. The country I had chosen over my birthplace. The country I now called home and to which she had lost me almost fifteen years ago.
María Joaquina Villaseñor’s “Rent”
Today, almost thirty years later, I long to remember the faces or names or stories of others who were in that safe house with us, experiencing something similar.
Each of these is accompanied by the brilliant photography of Gina Easley, who keeps FGP looking good.
If you haven’t read these, you have a damn good Thursday ahead of you!
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JENNIFER NIESSLEIN is the founder and editor of Full Grown People.
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