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 MoreRaye Hendrix __________ At Toomer’s Corner, the Morning After the Iron Bowl (2019) In memory of Pat Sullivan 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 MoreAlex Wells Shapiro For Alaina Getzenberg, Charlotte Observer Reporter __________ An Ekphrastic Fable about Construction Workers’ Breakless 8 Hour Effort to Remove a Racist Owner 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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