Center for Mennonite Writing

CMW Journal

Embodiment - The Shenandoah Valley Inkslingers

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  Lavish Banquets

  by Kirsten Beachy

  If I had grown in some generous place—

  If my hours had opened in ease—

  I would make you a lavish banquet.

  ~Ranier Maria Rilke, trans. Barrows and Macy

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  Give Us Good

  by Pam Mandigo

  The Characters

  TOM… a man with a monster

  AMELIA… his love

  Nebuchadnezzar, or NEZZAR… a grave digger

  Second Chronicles, or RONNI… his sister, or so she says

  Samantha Basil, or SAMBAI… the Monster Eater

  JEBEDIAH… a young wood cutter

  The Setting

  A Dark Swamp, once upon a time. Specifically, the ...

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  Hymn Sing

  by Jessica Penner

  The scent of a pre-op is unmistakable: rubbing alcohol, plastic, blood, and breaths of anesthesia. Such places are like Limbo. You are waiting for Something to Happen, and the only way you know that Something is About to Happen is the swish of scrubs meant only for you—the casual ...

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  The Gospel According to Juan

  by Tonya Osinkosky

  In this excerpt, Jesus (from Guatemala and who came to the U.S. when he was a pre-adolescent) remembers one of the stories about Quetzalcoatl that he told in sign language (italics) to his eight-year-old deaf nephew Juan (born and raised in the U.S.). While the Popol Vu, the ...

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  A Brief Personal History of Dancing

  by Anna Maria Johnson

  A story circulates throughout my extended family about the time that the wife of my father’s cousin, Gil, bellydanced at a family reunion, shocking and offending my Grandma Davis. Cousin Gil and his wife are no longer married—I can’t say whether the bellydancing incident had anything to ...

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  Vital Signs

  by Andrew Jenner

  Since you ask so intently, I’ll be frank. I do not eat meat because I think that doing so is wrong. Unnecessary. Unhealthy. Destructive to our world and disruptive to our society. And then there is the matter of slaughter, of ending the life of another creature, one possessed ...

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  Spanish Moss

  by Chad Gusler

  Lenore was happy to sever her friendships. It’s for a higher cause, she wrote in her journal the day before they left. And though she feigned sadness when many of them showed up to help load the U-Haul, her heart lifted when her father finally turned the truck onto ...

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  The Holy Book

  by Alisha Huber

  Some orthodox Jews kiss every book before they open it. Every book—not just the Torah, but rabbinical commentary, the Mishnah, The Joy of Cooking. This reverence for the bookness of books is something I understand, and I can picture them, men who surround their temples with curly brackets, gently ...

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  Q & A with the Shenandoah Valley Inkslingers

  by Andrew Jenner

  How did you come to join the group?

  KB: Chad and I, along with a few other writers, got a group together around the end of 2005. Eventually Andrew joined us. For various reasons, the group fizzled out after a year or so. In 2008, we rose, phoenix-like, from the ...