Throwback

by Tricia Park

Sabrina and Mindy giggled and over Mindy’s shoulder, Sabrina spied a boy: sandy-haired, with glasses. When they made eye contact, she looked away, only to glance back, feigning interest in his pile of textbooks, an open laptop. He was still staring. “I think he’s looking over here,” Sabrina laughed into her mocha latte. As Mindy pretended to look up at the painting nearest them – a large portrait of a dour farmer, by one of the starving barista-artists – the boy ambled over and dropped a tiny slip of folded paper, seemingly by accident: "you are very fetching," it read, and a number. Fetching, they wheezed later, even though Sabrina secretly relished the old-fashioned word, feeling like an Emma or a Lizzie or an Elinor, as they sauntered to the sound of honking cars, into the city lights.

6S

Tricia Park is a violinist and writer. A Juilliard graduate, she received her MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Since her concert debut at age thirteen, Tricia has performed on five continents and received the prestigious Avery Fisher Career and Fulbright Grants. Her writing has appeared in Cleaver Magazine, F Newsmagazine and Gathering: A Women Who Submit Anthology. She has a podcast called, “Is it Recess Yet? Confessions of a Former Child Prodigy.” Currently, Tricia is pursuing her PhD at the University of Illinois Chicago’s Program for Writers and is Associate Director of Cleaver Magazine Workshops.

Upriver

by Elizabeth Grey

Melanie’s phone vibrates with a notification and she looks at the screen and says, "I have to finalize my order today," and I know she’s talking about her bulk order—fifty pound bags of flour, beans, rice, and other staples. "Every crew needs a prepper," I say, and I’m not kidding, but I wish I was. Earlier, we attended a conservation film festival, watched stories about the earth and our relationship to it, about the ways people and wildlife and the rivers and the sea depend on one another, and I tell her my favorite was the one called hitoláayca (Going Upriver), the one about Devin Reuben, an indigenous 18-year-old who is training to be the first nimiipuu (Nez Perce) whitewater guide of his generation, though the nimiipuu were of course the original guides on the rivers of their unceded ancestral homelands. Before Devin, hiring a guide to explore these rivers has mostly meant paying a twenty-something man with skin the same fair shade as mine, outfitted in gore-tex. Melanie asks what I loved about the film, and before I can reply, she answers for me, more eloquently than I could manage anyway. "I’m buying fifty pound bags of flour so we won’t run out of bread," she says, "but the apocalypse arrived a long time ago, huh?"

6S

Elizabeth Grey is the author of the memoir Migration, forthcoming on Milkweed Editions. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Interesting Timing

by Tim G. Young

I'm hearing Van Morrison in the distance. The music makes my feet wiggle. Makes me want to watch a pretty girl dance. Almost makes me want to dance but I'm too tired to get up. The ceiling fan above me sounds like it needs oil. As I consider the noisy fan, the music stops.

6S

Tim G. Young is an author and singer/songwriter. His latest novel, A Taste of Heaven, is on the hunt for a publisher. His music can be found here.