September Spotlight
Yemassee Online’s September Spotlight features a collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that highlights a myriad of human emotions: amusement & confusion, hope & frustration, joy & loss. These works also each hint at the underlying longing which makes us all human — that desire to connect with those around us regardless of difference or distance, in spite of past hurt or future uncertainty. In this time of rapid change and altered normalcy, we hope readers will be inspired by the writing featured here to hold fast to these connections and to do the work necessary to sustain them.
Poetry: “Love Me Like Your Guns” by Len Lawson
I’m as black as they
I’m your trophy
above the mantle
Poetry: “A Theory of Forgiveness” by Len Lawson
Orange [a president…
…and now a vice-president
who just got the taste of segregation
out of his mouth after fifty years
Poetry: “What If Martin Luther King Could Do It” by Len Lawson
I know it’s unfathomable to see
after the way we’ve anointed him
patron saint of peace
Fiction: “Starling” by Darcy Casey
The notice came in the mail on Tuesday, but it remained sitting beside the refrigerator, resting, ignored, like a piece of partly burned cake. Terri hoped Bea would make the move, open it, read the words that would summon a truth they already knew.
Non-Fiction: “Watch What You Love” by Emily Lackey
If there is one thing that has always stood in the way of my father and me being friends, it is distance, and if there is one thing that has always brought us back together, it is movies. Even when we lived in the same house, I mostly saw my father on the weekends.