This issue marks 20 years of Halfway Down the Stairs! That’s 1,375 pieces published, drawn from 8,180 submissions, over 72 issues, with over 100,000 readers. The whole thing has been done on a shoestring, so how did we get started, and how have we continued so long? Our story starts several years before we published a single thing, in 2003, when several of us met in the depths of internet forums. We all liked writing and we wanted to do more of it, so we started a writing group which we cal...| Halfway Down the Stairs
For this special occasion of our twentieth anniversary, we are pleased to pull the band back together, giving editors past and present the chance to highlight some of our absolute favorite submissions over the last twenty years. We only publish writing we love, and we are so grateful to all of our writers for their contributions. In fact, one of our editors (Sherri Miller) abstained from this exercise, writing, “I have read and re-read many submissions that we have published in an attempt t...| Halfway Down the Stairs
I was born with clay in my hands,oil paint beneath my fingernails,my cradle rocked by a lullaby of tenor saxand the scratch of a pencil on cheap lined paper. At breakfast, someone recited Nerudaover toast slicked with jam.By dusk, a guitar moaned from the porch while my father’s drawings drifted like leaves across the floor. My mother hummed to the ghost of her grandmother,who danced barefoot through kitchens long vanished,flour-dusted and bright with song.We carried their stories in coffe...| Halfway Down the Stairs
I am turning myself inside out for you.One day, I hold out my spleen—here it is,fist-sized, cupped in my hands. I do need it,you know, for the blood cells and immunity. Still, if you need it more, you can take it. And since I’m in the mood to give, let’s throw in an appendix, some tonsils, sources of so much trouble. Maybe they can be of some use to you. Other days, I am opening the windowI built in my chest. Here, see my heartand lungs. Marvel at the engine that keeps me alive. S...| Halfway Down the Stairs
notes for a posthumous letter to Emily Dickinson – Here I am, another 21st century nothinghousebound by rain, the birdbath spilling its lipwhile bushtits bounce on teetery shoots in the hedge. On my desk, your face graces a box of cards bearing your (so-called) oracular lines, words like “ravage” and “Divulging” and “Heart.” Did you know these days unconventional capitalization is considered taboo? Along with your cute little dashes, too?This world is rule after rule....| Halfway Down the Stairs
the fraying hem of your dresslifts in the wind while you sway, rememberingthe midnight-blue gown you once wore,how it suited your style to perfection. Fearing darkness, I must confessI loved you more beforeyour voice fell back into the shadows.Yet, in your new translucencyyou seem more truthful than in April. Show me how to let the moon suffuse mewith its light the way it passes throughyour silvered formand makes it glitter like a shattered star. – Laura Ann Reed is a Contributing Editor...| Halfway Down the Stairs
I open the window. Airrushes in, dust, noise, you. A desert wind nestlesin my mouth.A plaintive vowel.A clusterof syllables rollinglike tumbleweeds.Is windthe only languageyou speak? What do you want from me, Muse?Today all I hearis Greek, your presenceponderouslike the ancient ruinshaunted by the shadows of poets.Like that abandonedcity I dreamed about as a childbefore you tookme from me.Obstinate columnswiveling upward intoa burning dome,are youmy funeral obelisk? You placedevery word I kno...| Halfway Down the Stairs
I am threading like a line of needles, slipping one note into the other, holding the melisma in the corner of my mouth. I am always leaning to a requiem a little early, before the one to sing for has actually died, speech rhythm matched like a patch over a song, sung over the body, sung over and over, the words move, the melody repeats. stitching. stitching. I line myself into the running stitch, steady as I clef and see the psalm lines back of the tapestry, words as shifting places marked by...| Halfway Down the Stairs
Whisper me a few lies, god, beautiful and familiar lies. Try to shoot the fireworks out of the sky With full grown tender things called souls. Sing low, sing high, sing never come back here again. With the light behind us—our darks divided falling to the floor, Singing O, this sack of water, swaying on its hook of bone While the body says simply, Stay. But the arrow groped on toward its mark Into an almost invisible earth. I inhale, exhale, move onThe way a painter enters a stud...| Halfway Down the Stairs
I am thinking of planting a treenow the soil is warm.March is when the spade does not ring or jaragainst flint and frostbut goes in soft through the earth—like a sigh. You tell me:do…| Halfway Down the Stairs