A journal of rediscovery
Welcome to the Spring Issue of Poor Yorick Journal! We are delighted to share a selection of wonderful prose, poetry, and visual art with you. Please enjoy, and support our wonderful contributors by taking a moment to read their bios at the end of the journal and engage with their
Editor’s Note: Occasionally while going through submissions, we come across works that just seem to fit together. The three pieces featured this week are all in different artistic forms. Each one speaks to the concept of war, how it affects those involved, and how life manages to go on during
My hand slides into my left front pocket, reaching for my iPhone. It’s not blind reflex or mechanical routine. It‘s a practice. I have decided quite intentionally to do less of other things so I can do more of this. When I grab my iPhone, I’ve trained myself to be ready, curious, and alert. I try to frame a photo so that I’m seeing what interests me, eliminating what doesn’t, and keeping my own image out of it. … Continue reading“Beauty, Prayer, and the Sticky Image: My iPhone Practice” by Randall VanderMey
Loss can be a terrible thing, but not always. In some cases, “gone” is good. After all, absence makes the heart grow fonder. People who lose weight are happy.
But it’s not only what we lose that changes us. It’s what we keep, as well. … Continue reading“An Eternal Light” by Mara Fein
“Freshly divorced, I drive from Miami, Florida, to Durham, New Hampshire, with my new girlfriend, who is headed for grad school there. We arrive a day early and decide to spend a night at Ogunquit Beach in southern Maine, a place I’d enjoyed greatly with my ex-wife and now want to reclaim as a single man. A depressed man. A browbeaten man. But a single man, choked with possibility.” … Continue reading“4 Objects, 21 Lessons,” by Steven Wingate
I wore it on my right middle finger: one of ten short but slender, pale, nervous, guitar-blistered fingers which melted in a room on fire during my sixteenth year. … Continue reading“An Amputee Looks Through a Ring,” by Dina Peone
My father had an unusual book that rested on his work desk. It was worn and brown. The covers looked hard, almost like a box. When I was a child, from my view at four feet, the ends seemed tinted, a marbled brown design, chipped at the edges. I imagined it to be a case, a chest filled with things I might find interesting or valuable. I wanted to look inside. … Continue reading“The Book,” by John Bonanni
By Lisa Peterson By the turn of the 20th Century, German immigrants, many of them Jewish, were coming to America in droves to start a new life. They landed in New York City equipped with their trade, as milliners, tailors, and hat makers. These men and women were skilled at
Continue readingGerman Immigration and New York’s Garment Industry
Sara Etgen-Baker is digging through her grandmother’s attic one day and comes across a box of old photographs of ancestors she’s never met. She learns about their past, their family, and their adventure that led her family to travel from Germany to America. … Continue readingThe Stranger in the Box
Barbara Krasner explores an album left behind by her deceased grandmother, whom she has never met. … Continue readingThe Velvet Album