Christmas Eve, 2016 Joshua Nguyen __________ & on this day the Cincinnati Bengals miss the game-winning field goal & the Houston Texans clinch a playoff spot. & the living room erupts & we stay drunk till midnight. There is a hidden box of Cognac my father finds in the cupboard.…
Read MoreThe Unexpected Dryness of a Lemon Poppy Scone Jacob Ginsberg __________ Eight pages into Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things, after being stunned to find I’ve somehow plagiarized a book I’ve never opened, I linger over the text on Sophie Mol’s tombstone: A SUNBEAM LENT TO US TOO BRIEFLY; I…
Read MoreLetter from the Editor Chris Lowe __________ The launch of this Boudin mini-issue focusing on football was supposed to coincide with the start of football season. That was the plan when I conceived of the mini-issue at last year’s AWP conference in San Antonio (way back in the early days…
Read MoreAt Toomer’s Corner, the Morning After the Iron Bowl (2019) In memory of Pat Sullivan Raye Hendrix __________ An autumn sun, expected, rises;steals darkness from between the stars to illuminate the streets and avenues—College and Magnolia brilliant white with billowing paper, a southern substitutefor snow: live oaks cloaked from trunk…
Read MoreThe Diehards Matthew Kenerly __________ San Jose State Spartans (3-8, 2-5 Mountain West) vs. Fresno State Bulldogs (1-10, 0-7 MW) November 26, 2016—Bulldog Stadium (41,031)—Fresno, California—12:30 PM PT Nothing lasts forever, not even unparalleled humiliation. That such embarrassments on occasion come to an end under the threat of a late…
Read MoreConsider the Pass Rusher Terry Horstman __________ 2007 NFL Season—Week One—Atlanta at Minnesota—Vikings lead 24-3—Falcons have the ball, 1st & 10 at the Vikings’ 23 with one second left in the 4th quarter Consider the pass rusher. A pass rusher’s prowess is determined almost entirely by the one number that…
Read MoreMister Average or, A Properly Forged Sword Eric P. Mueller __________ Silence, rare on the football field, usually occurs with gasps, like after the hardest collisions, or, in a moments of loss when the team scores, a player is injured, or you lose the game. That’s probably why my silence…
Read MoreAn Ekphrastic Fable about Construction Workers’ Breakless 8 Hour Effort to Remove a Racist Owner For Alaina Getzenberg, Charlotte Observer Reporter Alex Wells Shapiro __________ Strapped under the pits, bronzed Jerry Richardson flies away, sloppily offering a football by the nose to passerbys pausing at the spectacle like Jesus’s limp…
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