The Editorial Team

Spy Reprints “Desideratum: Something Desired as Essential” by Caroline Bock

September 3, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “In his late thirties, my youngest brother, a big guy who owned a bar in a southern college town, decided to study nursing. Eventually, he became a nurse practitioner in Cleveland, Ohio. He loved the work, especially with veterans and seniors. We were both crazy-busy with our careers and families and only checked in with one another for a birthday, on the fly between bringing our kids from one event to another, and then, the pandemic hit. He was, and is, on the medical front lines. Our phone calls changed from quick and superficial to something else. These calls made me think about what was essential in life. Sometimes little brothers are useful.” ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Devotion, A Ghost Story” by Laura J. Oliver

September 1, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “We can’t see dark energy or dark matter. We can’t see infrared, or ultraviolet light, yet we investigated and discovered they are real. What else exists beyond the limitations of our 5 ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Orange” by Andie Davis

August 31, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “I spent the first six months of the pandemic with my parents, helping to care for my dementia-afflicted mother. In therapy they encourage you to personify your anxiety, and so I came to see death as an obnoxious pest with whom I squabble constantly, while holding fast to love and beauty. Writing this story was therapeutic for me – but the character of Brett is pure fiction!”

Orange

DEATH IS NOT A GRIM REAPER. You know because you are watching it now across the table. It is an orange sponge, and it floats to the right of your mother, leaching small things at first. Phone number recall. Range of motion in the fourth finger. An aversion to oversalting. These absences occur on the margins. But over time, greater things go missing. Bearings. Empathy. Nouns. The sponge swells. Sometimes it teases you by releasing a damp spot, a trickle. Death winks at you through your confusion. Death says, You didn’t know I could breathe? ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “The Lesser Snow Goose” by Kelly R. Samuels

August 31, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “The Lesser Snow Goose was written shortly before my mother died. She is the ‘you’ in the poem—very ill, sitting beside me in the waiting area before a doctor’s visit. It felt fitting ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “At the Edge” by Richard Tillinghast

August 13, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “The history of the human race sadly seems also to be the history of warfare. In this poem I imagine what it would be like to be living on the edge of a war zone as fighting starts to break out, as is happening right now in Ukraine. The character in my poem is someone who lives, as I do, a secluded life in the country. He is perhaps Japanese; he is a sort of hermit.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints ” Things My Father Told Me” by E. Ethelbert Miller

January 31, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “I was one of the first students to graduate from Howard University with an undergraduate degree in African American Studies. I learned a lot about the history of the Black family from reading books and attending conferences. This experience however didn’t explain the quiet dignity of my father. His love for his family was not an abstraction but a difficult and fragile thing I came to honor. I was grateful for my father who worked hard everyday to provide a roof over my head. Today I still struggle to understand the mystery of his strength and the power he found not to leave or close a door.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “In the Distance” by Diane Thiel

January 23, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “‘In the Distance’ speaks to the idea that we might travel in order to get distance from something, perhaps a past in need of healing, but that the story will follow close behind. The unnamed “unrelenting story” in the poem might pursue us full circle, even circumnavigate the globe. But on a hopeful note, the expansive nature of travel does allow one to experience the world differently and perhaps see things with new eyes, toward a different end.”... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints “Morning Ritual” by Alfred Fournier

January 23, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “When a childhood friend told me about his devastating work injury, my mind flashed back to a time when we were sure we were immortal and invulnerable. I wrote this piece as a tribute to our friendship in those younger years, and out of a desire to understand what drove our acts of daring.” ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints”The Wicked Witch of the West” by Jona Colson

January 23, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “The Wizard of Oz was probably one of the first movies I ever watched, and I loved the Wicked Witch. Often, villains are my favorite part of narratives, and she terrified me—her laugh, ... [Continue Story]

Spy Reprints”Winner Takes All” by Holly Karapetkova

January 23, 2022 By The Editorial Team

Author’s Note: “This poem explores the ways we attempt to justify our privileges to ourselves. While I wrote it thinking primarily of my own white middle class American culture, it asks questions more ... [Continue Story]

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