eMerge Magazine

Christmas 1962 by John Rankine
It was Christmas 1962, I was seven-and-a-half years old and having serious doubts whether Santa Claus was real. It was all the usual clues – the multiple Santas in the various malls, the hidden packages under my parents’ bed and the serious doubts a man with a white beard could fly in the sky with eight reindeer, squeeze down a chimney we didn’t even have, and deliver millions of toys to all the world’s boys and girls in just one night. I was raised in the suburbs of Toronto, the middle child o

Prose

Dear Stranger by Kwanele Buthelezi
Letter to The Stranger I met in The Bus Today . Dear Stranger , I don’t know if it is okay to call you My stranger ,Or call you the girl with a pink cardigan ,who sat by the window with a pink journal on her hand and a plush sky-blue teddy bear hanging by her backpack .I noticed that today you were slightly agitated , I wondered if you still remembered me , stranger . I wondered if you remembered the red haired girl who shared a table with you on your first day in high school , but mostly I wo

Dying to Know Who Will Show by Zeek Taylor
Death rituals and customs in the Arkansas Delta are set in stone. When I was a child, I attended an occasional funeral, and I often accompanied my parents when they went to visitations. The visitations took place the evening before a funeral when people gathered to pay their respects and to view the body of the deceased. The event was usually held in a funeral home, but at times it took place in a private home. When I did attend a visitation, I was amazed at the floral displays. Large metal scr

There Is No Grief In My Mother's House by Chidera Solomon Anikpe
Udoka often regards thoughts of death with the weight of uncertainty pressing into the corners of his mind; an unsure kind of sadness in his heart, a secondhand grief gathering in his throat. It might have been the nature of grief–the startling quality of sad wails and the dramatic flair with which people mourned–that caused him to think of death as an inherently malevolent thing, a thing worthy of being feared. Once, when he was seventeen and his mother had just received the call informing he

A Chance to Be Saved by Zeek Taylor
In the early 70s I taught Junior High Art in Saint Louis. My fellow teachers became my running buddies. One of my friends, Evelyn, was a music teacher. Due to her position, she scored two free season tickets to the Saint Louis Symphony. I often went with her. I was appreciative of her generosity because as a poorly paid teacher, I could not have afforded to attend the symphony. However, there was a torturous trade-off. Evelyn had become involved in a charismatic Catholic-based faith healing move

Christmas 1962 by John Rankine
It was Christmas 1962, I was seven-and-a-half years old and having serious doubts whether Santa Claus was real. It was all the usual clues – the multiple Santas in the various malls, the hidden packages under my parents’ bed and the serious doubts a man with a white beard could fly in the sky with eight reindeer, squeeze down a chimney we didn’t even have, and deliver millions of toys to all the world’s boys and girls in just one night. I was raised in the suburbs of Toronto, the middle child o

Dear Stranger by Kwanele Buthelezi
Letter to The Stranger I met in The Bus Today . Dear Stranger , I don’t know if it is okay to call you My stranger ,Or call you the girl with a pink cardigan ,who sat by the window with a pink journal on her hand and a plush sky-blue teddy bear hanging by her backpack .I noticed that today you were slightly agitated , I wondered if you still remembered me , stranger . I wondered if you remembered the red haired girl who shared a table with you on your first day in high school , but mostly I wo

Dying to Know Who Will Show by Zeek Taylor
Death rituals and customs in the Arkansas Delta are set in stone. When I was a child, I attended an occasional funeral, and I often accompanied my parents when they went to visitations. The visitations took place the evening before a funeral when people gathered to pay their respects and to view the body of the deceased. The event was usually held in a funeral home, but at times it took place in a private home. When I did attend a visitation, I was amazed at the floral displays. Large metal scr

There Is No Grief In My Mother's House by Chidera Solomon Anikpe
Udoka often regards thoughts of death with the weight of uncertainty pressing into the corners of his mind; an unsure kind of sadness in his heart, a secondhand grief gathering in his throat. It might have been the nature of grief–the startling quality of sad wails and the dramatic flair with which people mourned–that caused him to think of death as an inherently malevolent thing, a thing worthy of being feared. Once, when he was seventeen and his mother had just received the call informing he

A Chance to Be Saved by Zeek Taylor
In the early 70s I taught Junior High Art in Saint Louis. My fellow teachers became my running buddies. One of my friends, Evelyn, was a music teacher. Due to her position, she scored two free season tickets to the Saint Louis Symphony. I often went with her. I was appreciative of her generosity because as a poorly paid teacher, I could not have afforded to attend the symphony. However, there was a torturous trade-off. Evelyn had become involved in a charismatic Catholic-based faith healing move

Christmas 1962 by John Rankine
It was Christmas 1962, I was seven-and-a-half years old and having serious doubts whether Santa Claus was real. It was all the usual clues – the multiple Santas in the various malls, the hidden packages under my parents’ bed and the serious doubts a man with a white beard could fly in the sky with eight reindeer, squeeze down a chimney we didn’t even have, and deliver millions of toys to all the world’s boys and girls in just one night. I was raised in the suburbs of Toronto, the middle child o

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The Last Night

Caesural Leaps – Elegy for ‘Mad Mac’ MacDonald

An American Christmas Story, 1991

MY Cousin

Is Democracy a Natural State of Mankind?

At the Crossroads

The Observer

The Thumbelina Chronicles

Pledge of Allegiance

I Don't Mean that Weird-Like

Rosebuds

A Time to Dance and a Time to Not Dance

Materials for His Dream

Here We Go Loop De Loop

The Lake

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