Aphorisms by Olivia Dresher
“Aphorisms are like caffeinated drinks,” says Olivia Dresher. And hers definitely give you a refreshing buzz. Dresher describes her aphorisms as “often personal (“I” statements) and poetic; some are written in the form of questions. They’re colored by intuition as well as thought. I hope some of my aphorisms bring a female sensibility to the [...]
Parables by Steven Carter
Parables can often be considered aphorisms in story form. The story has to be very short, of course, in keeping with the first law of the aphorism: It Must Be Brief. But many parables consistently meet this and the other four laws: It Must Be … Definitive, Personal, Philosophical, and Have a Twist. There is [...]
Aphorisms by Drew Byrne
Like Tim Daly, Drew Byrne is a practitioner of the syllogistic saying. His aphorisms have a whiff of E.M. Cioran around them, something dark and vaguely sinister around the edges. The gathering gloom is alleviated, to some extent, by a kind of bitter paradoxical humor, a final twist that raises what could be a smile [...]
On Rivers
A river flows under my street. A long time ago, it ran on the surface, when this place was an open field, dotted with ponds. Then, somewhere along the line, the river sank. It was diverted into pipes and submerged beneath roads and homes. We lost track of it. Now we only notice it during [...]