Les Bises
by Zach Roberge
Au revoir Le Mans. Au revoir France. I pause a moment before leaning in slowly and kissing your left cheek followed by your right. We embrace then I leave out the door, waving goodbye.
Forgetting
by Savannah Leigh
The two old men stood at the corner where Briar Avenue met Second Street. Bickering, they hovered over a phone, the faint glow of a maternity shop’s window display washing over them.
Doing Nothing, in French
Aujourd’hui, je me suis réveillé, me suis levé, m’a assis sur le canapé et j’ai passé une journée tranquille au Mans en train de ne rien faire.
Longfellow
Every second week in July, UMF staff and students work practically twenty-four hours a day to run a writing camp
Postcards
by Michael Crane
My father left my mother today. He caught a taxi to the airport and boarded a plane to Mexico. This confused my mother as she didn’t believe he knew anyone there. I was my parent’s only child and close to my father as any daughter could be. I stayed with my mother for six weeks.
French Food
The other day I bought bread. Not sliced bread and not bread that’s been stored on a shelf for days on end. I bought a fresh baguette that had been baked in store. I paid less than 1 euro, and to pair, I picked up fromage a tartinare, which is a garlic cheese spread.
Prognostication
By Brent Fisk
The first time I married I was eight.
I thought my grandmother would forbid it,
but she let the ceremony play out beneath an apple tree.
A rooster was my best man, but he flew
into a locust tree and would not come down when called.
We said our vows in the heat of the orchard,
small fruit, green and sour, and spun every wedded word
we pulled from the airwaves, a chaos of TV love.
The Throne
I had a magical night bar hopping with a group of non-French people who were spending time in Le Mans, same as me. We’d decided the night was called, “Drunk Day,” and it started at the bar, O Brassin Belge, though I was told its nickname was, The Belgian Bar.
La Nuit Des Chimeres
Le Mans puts on a show called, La Nuit Des Chimeres from July until September. It is a light show which uses projection mapping on the historical landmarks of Le Mans to tell the story of the chimera.
Like a Lord Under the Breeze of Waving Palms
by Edmund Sandoval
Is there ever a time to think of poetry? Of poets? Of the rivers of the delta? There are no Pyramids in Southern Illinois. Yet, Cairo. She called. She came over.