Brevity Magazine

The Old West End

With a vein of Lucille Clifton’s “In the Inner City” Our mothers left for work before we woke for school in Toledo in 1975 and our fathers left us latchkeys on the windowsill or under the mat in the inner part of the screen door. Our city was marked by demarcation zones of avenues. We were the kids of Collingwood Ave. Your block was your judge. We weren’t like hard city kids scared of the real ghetto kids past Delaware Ave. We were mostly Black, some white like me with a Black stepdad—call it survival how we made our tribe. So many fathers had it brutal, burned hands and mandatory overtime shifts at the glass factories, barely home to scold their children. Mothers were teachers and nurses, students, or teachers’ aids. Some worked at the factories too. We weren’t poor. None of us said the word poor. But think free lunch. Think government cheese, think a few white kids in class like “salt sprinkled in a lot of pepper,” Ms. Robinson joked. Ms. Robinson, who taught second grade at Fulton school and lived on the corner of Melrose. Hand-me-downs. We were hand-me-down kids, passed from uncles, aunts, and neighbors as […]

A Normal Couple

Sometimes I think he’s better … and then we’re out to eat and the coughing begins and I forgot—he forgot, we forgot—an inhaler (which bag was it in??) and then the looks from the other diners start and I swear he’s not dying and I’m not a bad wife for sitting here unconcerned as he runs to the bathroom—I’m a tired wife I’m a we’ve-been-here-before wife I’m a we-should-know-better wife because this is part of our normal, and sometimes things like lettuce are incompatible with my husband’s ability to breathe and sometimes I’m incompatible with my husband’s ability to breathe and I look like a lonely wife, a sad wife, an in-over-her-head wife, an ungrateful wife, a haughty wife as I sit and look at my phone in the booth while he’s off regurgitating part of his meal. Wife wife wife Right now I exist only in relation to him and his inability to eat a $10 burger without asphyxiating and whose responsibility is it—really—to make sure he remembers lettuce can be a problem, and what does the term “care partner” even mean when he’s able to make medical decisions, dietary choices on his own but I fill out the […]

About the Artist: Michael Todd Cohen

ON PERMANENCE Staghorn sumac, pokeberry and goldenrod were foraged from along the Long Island Sound, on the acre of land the paintings were made on; the rest from nearby sources, including a farmers’ market. Rendered on Eaton’s Berkshire typewriter paper with a “high permanency feature,” these pigments will nonetheless fade, reflecting the ever-changing landscape from which they came. On or near this acre on August 7, 1797 a fifteen-year-old enslaved Black girl named Minto was murdered. ON PERMANENCE imagines the possibilities of light she was not permitted to see on the morning of August 8, 1797. Sources: [1] Records of the Judicial Department Papers by Subject. Index to Inquests of Connecticut Deaths, 1711-1892. [2] Orcutt, Samuel, 1824-1893. A History of the Old Town of Stratford and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut. [New Haven, Conn.: Press of Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor], 1886, p. 426. ABOUT THE ARTIST Michael Todd Cohen (aka saltpeter) is a queer writer, artist and adoptee living in New England. He stewards lordship house, a private home with public programs to celebrate and serve the literary community. You can learn more about the artist and his work at michaeltoddcohen.com.

Issue 82 / Spring 2026

Issue 82 features essays by Angela Edward, Ann MacDonald, Brenda Miller, Emily W. Blacker, Erin Wood, Hea-Ream Lee, Karissa Nevada, L.F. Khouri, Michael Singleton, Noel Thistle Tague, Sara Daniels, and T.C. Martin.

Teaching with Brevity

Our TEACHING RESOURCES section (found in our top menu) offers a powerful collection of resources for writers and teachers of literary nonfiction, including prompts, craft essays, subject and craft element indexes, teaching tools, and much more.

About the Artist: Sherry Shahan

Sherry Shahan started ballet at 40, and pole dancing at 75, which seems sort of silly. She holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been nominated for 2 Pushcart Prizes (Poetry and Short Fiction) and Best American Short Stories. Her art appears in Rattle, Santa Fe Literary Journal, Wisconsin Review, Harbor Review, Progenitor Art & Literary Journal, Mud Season Review, and elsewhere. Artist Statement: I’ve wandered the globe as a travel journalist and photographer for decades, watching the world and its people from behind; whether in the hub of London, a backstreet in Havana, or alone from a window in a squat hotel room in Paris; whether with a 35 mm camera or an iPhone. These images reflect my passion for macrophotography, which makes my subjects appear larger than their actual size.

Bad Apple

I-10 into Houston on a Monday morning, and traffic doesn’t stop so much as give up. Just lies down and dies like a tired old horse. Sixty-five to zero in a blink, brake lights stacking up until the whole interstate looks like a busted Christmas parade. My CB comes alive. “This is Bad Apple, eastbound at the 7-5-3, and we are officially parked, boys.” That voice, hell, it was a velvet hammer. Smooth whiskey drawl, late-night DJ warmth, the kind of voice that makes you picture a man who’s seen some shit and decided to laugh at all of it. I liked him instantly. “Anybody know what we got up ahead?” Same old reports. Wreck at the 756. Maybe a fatal. Maybe an hour. Maybe three. Truckers start bartering routes, 610, surface streets, or just sit tight and bleed logbook hours into the Houston humidity. Bad Apple’s in the mix like he’s been there the whole time, easy, friendly, tossing advice, catching some back. Then the air settles into that particular silence truckers know too well: the dead time. Nothing to say, nothing to do but idle and sweat. And that’s when he starts singing. No warning. No “y’all listen […]

The Neighbor

I am afraid to leave my apartment, which is strange because a man died here. He died on the sidewalk below my balcony, actually. What I’ve come to refer to as bloodsand was the only change the next day. No yellow crime tape, only orange-soaked sand swept up to the wooden edging that encapsulates dark brush. The many hues of the Mediterranean continue to surprise me. The way the water shape-shifts from nearly black to the light blue of the sky to something nearly green. I am afraid of silence, of the things my mind will tell me, of the shaking in my chest. It’s been this way for nearly a year. The antipsychotics are helping. I am a reliable narrator. A month earlier, you could have questioned me, but I’m stable now. I take several Xanax and pack a light backpack. I put in an audiobook. One that starts at the After. An unnamed character has fallen to their death. I’ve listened to nearly a hundred domestic thrillers this year and this is the most common way they die, except poisoning. That happens a lot too. The Sentier du Littoral is rocky with cliffs and constant views of the […]

A Lexicon of Palestinian Boyhood

1. Saf Literal: Classroom. Lived: A stage for fear, laughter, rumors, and miracles—all within the same forty minutes. A place where windows were watched more carefully than teachers, in case the sound arrived...

Periwound

Wildfire smoke drifts over the hills and erases the farther shore. I’m waking cold from the same purple dream. It involves the edge of a dark cliff; it involves deep water. Recently, my sister has claimed avoidance as a cure for any ailment. My friend’s summer fling buys her a book on avoidant attachment and threatens to dump her. She takes him up on it, and we hit the beach alone.

Why I Can’t Stop Watching Women’s Basketball

Because biceps and quads and shoulders for days. Because lit women, hungry women, growling look-at-me fast-breaking behind-the-back-passing three-point-shooting-28-feet-out swoosh women. Chest-crashing blood-spitting skull-cracking and play on women. Women who own ball, court, confidence, six-plus feet of bone and plasma and muscle and ass-kicking. Own swagger, own fans, own media, own dominance, own queerness, own the divine kaleidoscopic cloudburst cornucopia of female design. Because me at 4, me at 8, me at 12, me at 15, me at 18 trying to own a feminine body, a body like a jump shot bouncing off the rim. Because me alone in my childhood bedroom donning an oversized Knicks jersey and backwards baseball cap, costumed in toughness, flexing in the mirror, staging a play of me as player, me as boy-girl, until the door opens. Because my wife, with her old high school basketball injuries still haunting, electrifies as Wilson stuffs, Cloud scoops, and Plum drives, calling out un-called fouls and rewinding grace-notes for us to watch in slo-mo. Because for four quarters we disappear into that dance together. Because when crypto-bros throw florescent sex toys on the court, these women kick those dildos to the sidelines, clearing that trash like crushed soda cans […]

Inventory for Some Kind of Fairy Tale

Solstice Late June. Green rains. The gardens hum. Who would die when the days are so long? Yet my grandmother lies in a hospital room drifting toward death on dark waters...

Jizo

It’s National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, but I don’t yet know this as I wander up a side street in Nozawa Onsen, a bit bedraggled in my yukata and short jacket. I’ve left our inn with no clear destination, just want to be outside in the clear autumn air while I wait for whatever will happen next. I’ve already bathed in the inn’s onsen, eaten savory buns steamed in the springs’ hot water. My travel partner is taking a nap. We’ve survived a typhoon, the day-long storm derailing our itinerary, and now the sunny afternoon lures me outside once again. The town is busier than it had been this morning, with schoolchildren congregated at the corner who yell hello! hello! A few elderly men sit at the footbath soaking their feet, smoking and scrolling through their phones. I instinctively turn right and head up a steep cobblestoned lane, glimpsing the red torii, a curved arch, that signals an entrance to a Shinto shrine or temple, a holy place. As I approach the temple complex, I’m drawn to a shrine that holds several seated Jizo, the Bodhisattvas that protect unborn children. I’ve seen these shrines before, at Yamadera, a […]

Here For You

The radiation oncologist holds up a piece of paper that looks like something used for target practice. Black outline of a human figure, faceless, gender neutral. You and your father watch as she points to a clump of black squiggles drawn across the figure’s pelvis. “This is the area we treated last time.” She points to a larger clump above, on the figure’s abdomen. “This is where the cancer has spread since then.” Your father grimaces as he shifts position on the chair next to yours. “What next?” “We radiate the area, same schedule as before, five days a week for two weeks.” He nods. What? Somehow you manage to keep your voice low. “Dad, don’t you remember what happened the last time you had radiation? The side effects? Rectal bleeding? Pain so severe that OxyContin couldn’t touch it?” Your father shoots you that ‘don’t talk back’ look you remember so well from childhood. “I can take whatever they give out.” For a moment, the two of you sit in silence, eyes locked. You are the oldest of his five children, the one who lives closest to him, the one your father depends on most since your mother died. Your […]

Zero

Today I am thinking that to be fat is to retain a vexing relationship with the number zero. This thought arrives with an egg in my hand. I am preparing an omelette and contemplating the mathematical representation of nothing, which at certain angles resembles the contour of the egg I am about to crack. There isn’t much a fat guy can do to flatter his figure. It’s more a case of damage control the GQ article I read in high school advised. The lifeless yellow yolk plops into the ceramic whipping bowl. Syrupy albumen chases it down as if to ask permission. Once, when I was trying on a suit for my grandfather’s funeral, a tailor informed me that strapping a belt around a very wide waist is like tying a string around the bottom of an egg. When I heard this, I imagined a crimson thread pulled taut over an egg’s equator. Did you know that the widest part of an eggshell is called the equator? It is something I almost want to announce on the street—that this little zero I once cradled in my palm had a geography, was itself a sort of world. The reason I was […]

Kneading

The first time two nurses in the neonatal intensive care unit place her weightless body on my chest so I can hold her skin to skin, she sticks to me like a hand kneading dough that begs for flour. I sit in a rocking chair but brace against movement, against breathing, although the nurses claim my breath and my heartbeat have the power to regulate hers. She is nothing like I thought my baby would be. She is not supple plump rolls that bounce back. She is skin translucent red-purple and molting, ribs like curved toothpicks, respiration forced by plastic tubing. She is hourly pencil ticks of blood gasses, her every internal enzymatic process reflected on a chart. She is monitors dinging cruelly, saying do something now before her heart stops or she stops breathing or her temperature climbs too high or infection causes her thin skin to burn, layers shedding like sheets of phyllo. Until now, she is watched her through the plexiglass hood of her isolette, the microclimate for thermoregulation, for shielding against contagion. The womb that sustains her because mine couldn’t. But receiving her from the nurses’ hands and letting her rest against my body feels like […]

The Name They Gave Me

My name is Dixin. Pronounced disin, the way my mother whispered it when she was tired, the way my grandmother said it when she wanted me to eat more, the way I heard it inside my own head when I still believed I belonged somewhere with certainty...

The Tide

I am on a precious 15-minute break from teaching a summer writing course to incoming college freshmen. The students have mostly dispersed from the basement classroom I’ve been assigned, quick to escape to the stairwell to huddle in small groups and giggle and flirt with each other, to zone out while scrolling on their phones or take a little walk. I sit at my desk at the front of the room and open my laptop. I pull up an article on plastic pollution I’ve been avoiding reading because I know it will only depress me. Today it calls to me, magnetic, inevitable. I take in the words, “Preparing infant formula in a plastic bottle is a good way to degrade the bottle, so what babies end up drinking is a sort of plastic soup. In fact, it is now clear that children are feeding on microplastics even before they can eat.” The background hum of chatting students fades to a dull, pulsing crash, like waves, so that when I close my eyes I can feel the warmth lapping at my feet, engulfing me, until I’m drowning in it, this plastic soup, the chemical sea, it’s inside of me, a part […]

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