It’s that time of year again when editors mail in their nominations for The Pushcart Prize. We each get six picks and untold hours of gnashing of teeth.
Congratulations to this year’s FGP Pushcart nominees!
While I like these men, and while I have tried so hard to make myself likeable, nay, loveable, to them, I’m not sure there’s a space we can all inhabit. I’m suddenly skeptical that the overlap between my life and theirs is enough for a real relationship to ever develop. Not now, not after so many years. Any scientist will tell you that blood is a weak binding agent. Without the underpinning of a shared history, does our kinship offer anything other than a possible source for a replacement kidney?
Amanda J. Crawford’s “Other People’s Clothes”
The second time I left my husband, I left with nothing but my purse. It was sitting in a room on the other side of the house with my cell phone and keys inside when he held me in a room and told me, “You will never leave this house on your own two legs again.”
Magin LaSov Gregg’s “To Punctuate”
Last year, when my husband and I joined the Women’s March on Washington, I told my father I’d be “out of pocket” that day. He never asked what I’d be doing, just like I never asked him if he actually voted for Trump. I simply assumed so because of the giant Trump sticker on the rear window of his car.
Jennifer James’s “Stars in the Sky”
A year earlier, I’d still been nuts but in a much more manageable way.
Patrice Gopo’s “Blueberry Season”
“We need to go to Alaska,” I say to my girl. “We need to travel to a place with a real winter.” I think of Anchorage, where I come from, the city I left twenty years ago.
Jody Mace’s “Weird, Loud, Smelly World”
Somehow, we’ve gotten this idea that we have a right to never be disturbed by other people, to never be offended.
Most of these essays are accompanied by photos by the wonderful Gina Easley. Let’s have a hand for her, too!
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