On the Big Island of Hawai‘i, Honokaa is the town tourists drive through to get to Waipi‘o Valley. At the top of the valley is a scenic overlook, which provides an unobstructed view to the black sand beach, river,…
I become quite pretty in the winter, in the dim afternoons with sheet metal skies. I line my lips with brown, burgundy, wine and whiskey stains. I crave bright fruits as though they’ll substitute the daylight—sunset persimmons, sunrise grapefruit,…
Let’s say you follow her home. The barefoot girl on the corner of Union, where Nut Creek gnaws at the back steps of a church and the struggling crisis center. She cuts her own hair, with garden clippers. Let’s…
rock verb \ ˈräk \ rocked; rocking; rocks transitive verb 1 : to move back and forth in or as if in a cradle Every ten years the Arkansas catfish woman emerges from her riverbed and rocks to-and-fro, lets…
When you arrive, the boy is perched on the kitchen island with a serrated knife in his hand. Stabbing at the vacuum-sealed top of a plastic cereal bag. When he sees you in the doorway, he grins a wild…
Stories that Slip Sideways: An Interview with Joyce Hinnefeld by Ron MacLean Joyce Hinnefeld and Ron MacLean met as fellow doctoral students in the English Department at SUNY Albany in the early 1990s. They’ve stayed in touch since then,…
I ignore him as he takes the chair across from mine, though I knew of course that he’d be here—back porch of the local backwoods dive bar, the night cool, the back of my neck burning. It is November…
They thought I’d be the best kid on the team, made plans before the season started, me at striker or wing—using my speed to split defenders, Inside Scissors to a Step-Over, moving that ball from heel to toe like…
They staggered, stunned, into the fall, she and Teddy making giant vats of pasta and vegetarian burrito dinners to feed twenty-five, inviting home everyone they knew to eat, to drink, to stay over, please, we have a futon and…
They taught us how to kill with assault weapons, bayonets, bare hands. They taught us the lay of the land, how to navigate by rivers and stars, how to use cover to outflank enemy operatives, how to make a…
Some writers begin with character, some with theme, some with plot. I almost always begin with language. While writing “What They Didn’t Teach Us” I had two bits of language in mind: “collateral damage”—since the 1960s a favorite military euphemism for killing civilians—and “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a sickening obfuscation used by the Bush administration to disguise torture. Neither of these phrases made it into the story, but they’re lurking in the margins.
The first time I read this piece to an audience I unexpectedly found myself almost shaking with anger. As so many people have noted, we’re now in a period of Orwellian Newspeak. I hope that “What They Didn’t Teach Us” catches some of the current administration’s obscene debasement of language, their rapaciousness—taking and destroying and monetizing everything in reach—and their cruelty.
LUKE WHISNANT’s In the Debris Field won the 2018 Bath Flash Fiction International Novella-in-Flash Award. His other books include the novel Watching TV with the Red Chinese and the short story collection Down in the Flood; his latest collection, The Connor Project, is forthcoming from Iris Press in 2020. He teaches at East Carolina University, in Greenville, NC, where he also edits the journal Tar River Poetry.
