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Oh, El

Zoe Whittall September 15, 2011 “Sometimes, Jim, I think you’ve never listened to a single thing I’ve ever said besides come on my tits.”

Zoe Whittall

Zoe Whittall, pictured. Photograph by Kourosh Keshiri.

Jim and Eleanor stood in the middle of a frozen pond. It was early March, around midnight, and the trip had been Jim’s idea. He felt liberated from the city an hour south, and like a superhero for walking where he normally swam.

Eleanor, the only other human for miles, felt one second away from breaking through the ice. Imagined the hypothermia, certain death underneath fourteen visible stars. The pond was a bull’s-eye in a circle of trees, thick and unforgiving. Eleanor didn’t trust rural areas. There was a break …

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Tenth Anniversary: Spring

ISSUE 43 Tenth Anniversary: Spring 2012

online content:

also in this issue:

  • Face the Music

    by Tim Falconer How can someone who passionately loves music also be a terrible singer? Tim Falconer takes up voice lessons—and discovers the surprising science of tone deafness.

  • The Big Job

    by Deni Y. Béchard As a teenager, Deni Y. Béchard went to Vancouver to live with his father, an ex-con with a penchant for telling tall tales. He met a man desperate to forget the past.

  • The Homesickness of Astronauts

    by Johanna Skibsrud "She felt a great sadness. She would remember next to nothing of this, even soon."
  • [see full issue contents]