Art by Sandra Menefee Taylor
If I Declare the Obvious
By Kayla Gray ● 2019
After Ada Límon’s “The Conditional” What if you stayed a little longer? What if you told the afterlife to shove it? What if I picked up the phone to your
Art by Tom McGregor
Glass Womb
By Rebecca Frost ● 2019
In the crystal hothouse to escape the cold I am here, at last. Wrapped myself in gray wool, blue parka, scarf, mittens, galoshes. Tissue in my pocket. Slipped just once
Art by Susan Solomon
Alzheimer’s Lament
By Georgia Greeley ● 2019
Right this moment, in this place, Mother doesn’t know me, her daughter; yet she is still glad to see me and talks gaily. She is happy and cared for. Right
Art by Ta-coumba Aiken
William Taylor, First Fiddler of Minnesota
By John Heine ● 2019
Who led a band in the Minnesota Territory known as “the favorite of the dancing public”? A Saint Paul resident, barber, and Black man by the name of William Taylor.
Arts Roots in Saint Paul: The Seventies!
By Peg Guilfoyle, Molly LaBerge Taylor ● 2019
We remember it as a time of great energy and excitement in the city, when it seemed that anything could be accomplished, and everyone was ready to pitch in. It
Art by Kristi Abbott
Listening
By Tim Nolan ● 2019
I learned about listening from my grandmother Ruth who allowed great silences to live and breathe in a conversation. She then would say the most apt thing, having thought about
Art by Peter Kramer
My Time as an Irvine Park Resident
By Patricia Kester ● 2019
My family once lived in Irvine Park, a community that was developed in the mid-nineteenth century by some of Saint Paul’s most influential families. It was an era of horse-drawn
Memories of a Boy Becoming a Man
By Robert Tilsen, Noah Tilsen ● 2019
as interviewed by Noah Tilsen I was born in January 1925. My father and mother, Edward and Esther Tilsen, thought it would be too difficult to get a doctor in
I’ve Been Working on the Railroad
By Deborah Cooper ● 2019
AT ELEVEN YEARS OLD, my dad, Jack, came to a bitterly cold Saint Paul. His stepfather had been appointed pastor of St. James AME Church, on the corner of Dale
Art by Sara Endalew
Wiigwaasabak
By Marcie Rendon ● 2019
Our ancestors dreamt your future The iron rail, Angus cows slumbering in shorn prairie The buffalo remembered only on the metal That buys and sells on the grain exchange There
More Champagne?
By Will Tinkham ● 2019
Her orphanage sat innocently in the middle of Washington Street, just above the Upper Landing docks of the Mississippi, with the Bucket of Blood Saloon at one end of the
The Bazooka Bubble Gum Fraud
By Louis DiSanto ● 2019
When I turned ten in April of 1958, I thought I was pretty wise to the ways of the world, especially when it came to adults, girls, trading marbles and