Twenty hours stretch between Tucson and Mazatlán, Mexico on a highway that never ends. Hour one, 6 AM: inside the 1969 baby blue VW van, metal heats and expands as the dawn breaks pink over the Catalina Mountains. Saguaros cast long shadows across Interstate 19. My mother spends hours preparing the back for our journey—layering serapes, […]
Palms, Parties, and Pink Cotton Candy Palm Springs sparkles with mid-century glamour, healing hot springs, and endless sunshine. Named for the natural hot springs of the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, this desert oasis sits at the base of Mount San Jacinto, creating a unique microclimate that attracted Hollywood stars beginning in the 1920s. […]
HER/HIS story MC sits on a hard chair shaking her head. It is pre-summer 2013 and MC’s big breasts fall out of MC’s flowered razorback bra. MC’s black thong swings up from MC’s black yoga pants. It is 11:06 am and horns are honking on the avenue. Later, when MC will be eating cornbread casserole […]
His Murphy bed dropped from the wall in that Arizona studio apartment. While he watched Miami Vice.Ed wash the teacups, wipe counters. clear away his MIS textbooks. Bright PM sharp:catching glimpses of Don Johnson’s world between dishes and dusting. Espadrilles with no socks. silk t-shirts.Bangladesh to AZfiltered through pink and palm trees on his twelve-inch […]
I am the only one alone on this train,watching families cluster, friends laugh.Mile Post Seventy-Two slides past the window,avalanche protection standing guard. Morning haze from last night’s forest firescents the air like distant campfires.I missed the bus downtown yesterday—another small journey undertaken alone. It seems like old times:everyone else, and me. Not lonely, not ecstatic, […]
Kinder, I was her child until childhood grew teeth
she was mine Bubbe until memory learned hunger
my little town swallows itself along the river
while moss grows backwards into time
Joy radiates through my entire body like electricity. Sparks travel from my core to my fingertips in waves of pure, unfiltered delight.
A few words by the author: Brill’s Hidden in Plain Sight is not a conventional Holocaust memoir; rather, it is an act of literary cartography – mapping the landscapes of exile, inherited trauma, and historical erasure. She takes readers on a journey through Belgrade, where her family’s history is embedded in its streets and architecture, and where memory itself is both visible and hidden in the spaces between past and present.
Haiku Hike He woke me at 4. We shared Ramadan’s first meal. Texas stars watched close.
James laced a telephone cord around his mother’s neck and pulled until he asphyxiated her.