Literal Latte

Ben Miller Reads from his Debut Memoir “River Bend Chronicle” at KGB Tues March 19th

The Editors — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 18:17:00 +0000

We're thrilled to announce that Ben Miller, a frequent contributor to Literal Latte, has just published his debut memoir River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa. Ben will be reading from River Bend Chronicle at 7pm on Tuesday, March 19th 2013, at the famous KGB Bar (85 East 4th) in NYC. The reading is free.

Matt Burke

Matt Burke — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 17:31:36 +0000

Matthew Burke is a sculptor whose research interests include finding parallels between human activity and those in the natural world in order to communicate the interdependency of life. He uses wood for its lasting character and ever association with nature. His work is in several major museums and collections including, the Museum of Modern Art Library, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Institute of Art Library.

Force

Teresa Leo — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:01:27 +0000

Third Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Poetry Award. I ask my husband, ever the literalist, if he missed me before he knew me...

Birding by Ear

Susan Cohen — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 22:00:52 +0000

First Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Poetry Award. We're mostly couples of that age when people start to wonder what they've missed, and set out to find it evenings...

The Past Life Hypnotist Predicts The Future

Judith Slater — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:59:55 +0000

Winner, 2012 Literal Latte Short Short Contest. Just a few minutes ago I began to feel the tide tugging a little harder, the fog closing in, and I knew without looking at my watch that it was close to quitting time. I'm tired — bone weary, really. In the space of only one afternoon I took a threesome of middle-aged women back, one by one, to 18th-century Lisbon....

Luffing

Mary Heather Noble — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 21:59:05 +0000

Second Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Essay Award. When I think about my father, the picture that always comes to mind is him standing on the shore of Lake Erie against the distant Cleveland skyline. He watches the wind socks on the pier waving in the breeze, their streamers a rainbow contrast against the blurry city beyond. I imagine in his mind a single perpetual question: Is it going to be a good day for a sail?

The Other Chair

Annita Sawyer — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:23:24 +0000

First Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Essay Award. On G8-East, an inpatient psychiatry unit at the West Haven VA hospital, it was time for team meeting. I scribbled the last of my therapy notes, tucked the pen and notebook under my arm, grabbed my sweater, and slipped a loaded key ring over my wrist....

Kritios Boy

Nancy Ludmerer — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:14:45 +0000

Third Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Essay Award. I'd always remembered Michael's birthday, even when years and miles separated us, and when there it was in The New York Times death notices after his name, I knew it was him, my first love, beginning when I was fifteen....

A Kite, A Frame, A Tail

Gregory Loselle — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 20:05:39 +0000

Second Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Poetry Award. Consider how a kite struck from the sky collapses on itself and creases up in flight: a battered bird, a broken hand...

Freefall

Susan Cohen — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:23:40 +0000

First Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Poetry Award. He plans to plummet from the edge of space. Freefall. Rainfall. Whirlwind....

Mistaken Identity

Enid Harlow — Wed, 13 Feb 2013 19:08:34 +0000

Third Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Fiction Award. In a corner of the room sits an old man with sparse white hair, face of chalk, and fixed blue eyes. His body is as thin as a cadaver's and his eyes stare out into the room as if they would seize everything in it and take it down into themselves. The baby at the breast cannot see the old man sitting in the corner....

Sunday

Tracy DeBrincat — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:47:03 +0000

The hawk had a squirrel up in our eucalyptus. Mockingbirds dove at them, persistent, fluttering, loud. Sudden chaos in my favorite tree....

The Last Sister

Tracy DeBrincat — Tue, 12 Feb 2013 21:41:33 +0000

This is the trouble with visiting the past: you are not invited....

Cohabitation

Clara Changxin Fang — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:50:52 +0000

Even this close we are constantly parting. Mornings you stir coffee, cream blooms in your cup like a white peony...

Horse Cemetery

Denton Loving — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 02:40:00 +0000

On the far side of my family's farm, across the pasture and in the deepest stretch of the western woods, there was once a horse cemetery...

Amanda’s Violin

Judy Fort Brenneman — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 20:37:40 +0000

Third Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Essay Award. The round table at the coffee shop is covered with a dark green and tan cloth. The four chairs fill its arc on the side away from the wall. I'm on one end of the arc; my backpack and a white teddy bear named Snowball fill the next two chairs; and Amanda, a slight, elven-faced girl-child of ten, sits in the fourth chair....

I’m Not Writing About Robin

Wendy Thornton — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:58:35 +0000

Second Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Essay Award. My friend, Robin, died recently. I drove across the country to visit her before she died, to remind her that her bravery made me brave. She seemed comforted by this thought, as much as you can be comforted when you know you're going to die within a specific timeframe....

Sinking the Eight

Marc Nieson — Tue, 18 Sep 2012 00:01:50 +0000

First Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Fiction Award. It seems your life can be measured. And I'm not talking about notches in a doorway, candles on a cake, or even that line between dates on your tombstone, but individual moments. Split seconds, really, that’ll come along quiet and fleeting as heartbeats yet divert your destinations nonetheless....

The Limits of Certainty

Renée Thompson — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:53:06 +0000

Second Prize, 2012 Literal Latte Fiction Award. He was most alive while birding. In summer he pitched a tent, prepared his meals on a Coleman stove, and drank coffee from an aluminum cup. He crawled into his sleeping bag just after dusk and rose before sunrise, ate a breakfast of one boiled egg or half a banana, then prepared his field gear...

Tinkering with Grief in the Woods

Mark Liebenow — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 23:25:10 +0000

First Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Essay Award. I sit in my shorts by an open window in Kentucky surrounded by a hundred sleeping monks. Beyond the monastery's stone walls, beyond the dark scrabbled woods of hickory and oak, a dog barks at raccoons moving through the night, or at nothing at all, and the world settles back down into quiet....

Our Potluck (Your Contribution)

Daniel A. Harris — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 19:08:41 +0000

Winner, 2012 Literal Latte Food Verse Contest. "Cupcakes?!" "Oui, mais cupcakes de France!" you purr. We grin — that coarse word young Julia, post-war, would have scorned. Il n'ya pas un mot français....

Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Eleanor Leonne Bennett — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:11:19 +0000

Eleanor Leonne Bennett is a 16 year old internationally award winning photographer and artist who has won first places with National Geographic, The World Photography Organisation, Nature's Best Photography, Papworth Trust, Mencap, and The Woodland Trust and Postal Heritage....

Swallows

Christie B. Cochrell — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:12:35 +0000

Winner, 2011 Literal Latte Short Short Contest. Isabel would attribute her undoing to that summer in Crete. She would recall how she was minding her own business, reproachlessly conducting research on the iconography of 14th-Century frescoes, when she found God...

Justin Winslow

Justin Winslow — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:12:07 +0000

Justin Winslow is an illustrator who has a true connection between hand and heart. His ink, watercolor, and digital images reflect his fascination with everything symbolic, from pop icons to monsters to visual metaphors. He was formally trained at the Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland. When he is not creating original art, he can be found working out of his Brooklyn based studio for freelance clients. His main illustration site can be visited at www.justinwinslow.com and his Mythfits webcomic can be found at mythfits-comic.blogspot.com.

Edie Watches the Tsunami from her Bed at Life Care Rehabilitation Center in Las Vegas, March 2011

Paige Riehl — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:11:45 +0000

First Prize, 2011 Literal Latte Poetry Award. Through the window was the concrete parking lot. Cars came and went as if the drivers couldn’t decide....