My goal was to wake with nothing in my head—it’s nice to begin a day having already achieved. Sunlight on the dead grass of the ski slope. A lone runner works his way up the fire road, a dull throb in my ankle where it twisted on the edge of getting younger, of celebrating my luck in still being able to run. Ralph, my friend, has been trying to convince me for years that the life of an adult is boring but I’ve never aspired to the life of an adult. My wife holds up a diaper, “A pound of […]
Tag: Issue 100
Normal Problems: ZYZZYVA No. 100
by Erika Recordon
Erika Recordon’s work first appeared in ZYZZYVA back in Issue No. 91 (Spring 2011), with the publication of two of her charmingly off-kilter yet genuinely serious stories, “Evolution” and “Our Brave Little Soldiers.” The elan that characterizes those short works is evident once again in her new (and much longer) story for our 100th issue, “Normal Problems.”
The tale—or perhaps even a fable?—of a woman trying to make her relationship work with a great guy who’s only fault is a long past as a serial killer (a literal “lady killer”), “Normal Problems” revels in dark humor. Incredibly, the story goes much deeper than this set up might lead one to believe is possible, freshly evoking the anxious rationalizations we make for wanting to stay with someone, for wanting to see what we so badly need to see.
The following is an excerpt from “Normal Problems,” which, of course, can be read in its entirety in Issue No. 100.
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The Dead Ones
by Edie Meidav
A past contributor to ZYZZYVA (her essay “Cuba+Kids-Water” ran in Issue No. 95), novelist Edie Meidav makes another welcome appearance in our pages, this time in our 100th issue. Her essay, “The Dead Ones,” takes her back to the home of her youth, the Bay Area.
When asked about the background of “The Dead Ones,” Meidav writes, “Sometimes I feel we have these hearts that are like ships crowded with all the people we love or once knew well—so the question becomes how crowded can your ship become?—and every time I beat a path of return to the Bay Area, walking certain streets in that balmy air, I feel both cradled and pierced by memories: the Bay Area is something of my pastoral. (I remember, now, Philip Roth talking about walking Newark before writing American Pastoral.) In the last few years, I kept walking near my former mentor’s house in a state of disbelief that all that vitality had vanished, her wit, her stockinged legs.”
The following is an excerpt from “The Dead Ones.” Edie Meidav will also be one of the readers at ZYZZYVA’s All Star Summer Celebration at 6 p.m. on Thursday, July 17. You can RSVP your free ticket here. And you can order a copy of Issue No. 100 here.
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Labor Poem No. 10, Emilio Fonseca Construction I
by Dan Alter
Dan Alter is a poet whose work has been published in Camelia, Southern Lights, Zeek, and, now, ZYZZYVA. His poems “Labor Poem No. 10” and “Labor Poem No. 11” appear in Issue No. 100. “I took the form for this series of Labor Poems from Joshua Beckman,” Alter says, “who developed it in his book Shade.”
Alter, who lives in Berkeley and is a union electrician, will be one of several readers at ZYZZYVA‘s All-Stars Summer Celebration on Thursday, July 17, at the McRoskey Mattress Company Showroom in San Francisco. The event is free, and you can RSVP your ticket here. In the meantime, we offer one of Alter’s poems from our milestone issue.
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