and other stories, essays, and things
Once upon a time, in an unremarkable city three hours from anything interesting . . .
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Poseidon’s Lament: A One-Act Play Inspired by E. P. Coleridge’s Translation of Euripides’ The Trojan Women
Apollo girded Troy with walls of limestone and I garnished his walls with the seas. My seas were the first to fail after Athena, far cleverer than I, taught the slighted Hellenes to tar their ships. She then guided Odysseus’ mind and Epius’ hand to build Troy a gift that would defeat Apollo’s walls: The…
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Herodotus’ Rhodipus or Sappho’s Sobriquet? A Close Reading of Jesper Svenbro’s “The Messon of the Island of Lesbos: Toponym as Evidence in the History of Ideas, or Introduction to Ten Poems from The Name of Sappho’s Daughter”
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on
Jesper Svenbro’s “First Prologus to the Charaxos-Poem” is the first in a series of poems dedicated to unraveling the identities of Sappho’s family members through their relationships to Anatolia, Lesbos, and the wider Mediterranean, including the enigma that is Doricha. It begins: Before the Charaxos-poem begins, a rich heiress on the island of Lesbos marries…
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Posting
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on
in EdmontoniansThe youth hated getting up at four A.M. because mucking stalls is a disgusting business and because the old farmhouse was so cold in the mornings. But when his alarm went off on the first Saturday of June, 2025, he threw off the covers and hopped out of bed for today he would teach his…
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The Bridge of the Archons
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on
Douglas awoke to the sound of pounding surf and sunlight upon his face. Cirrus clouds streaked the sky above an opaque curtain of the enormous canopy bed in which he lay. To either side, towering cliffs ranged a bay that opened to a Pacific glistening with the rays of the setting sun. Gulls swooped and…
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The Invasion of Mill Creek
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on
in EdmontoniansThe teenager was crazy for Andrea but Andrea was crazy for Luke and the teenager could not see why. For one, Luke was so short that he stood a head below most of his male peers. For two, his head resembled a balloon and even Luke himself had described his presently-peeling nose as “bulbous”. For…
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