Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art

from Brandon Schrand, Growing Up Superfund

IV. An Interview
BRS: What was the strangest thing you saw there? DAD: One day one of the engineers' assistants showed me a pond. We stood at the edge of it, and it was deep, and at the very bottom you could see this strange blue glow. And I said to this guy, I said, "Is that safe?" And he said to me, "Safe enough." And we both kind of laughed. But I'll never forget that blue glow. That was probably the strangest thing.

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VI. A Fairy Tale
Once upon a time there was a green world called Soda Springs, and Soda Creek coursed through its pastures. It was a bucolic world, an Elysian romping ground, and I kicked wet sneakers through its dewed and brightening grasses. I dove headlong into that stream, into the waters so clear you could see the bottom—a wavering carpet of green moss, interrupted here and there with smooth stones. I swam in the stream and kicked, splashed, lunged, flinging my young body from its tangled banks every chance I got. I plunged deep: head down, eyes open. I lived along that stream. Hunted muskrat along the meanders. Built bridges over its waters. Climbed trees along its banks. Skipped flat stones across the gurgling surface. Soda Creek was my stream. It was to me what birches were to Frost, what the earth and every common sight was to Wordsworth. It was my Mississippi, my Big Blackfoot, my Big Two-Hearted. I lived out endless summer hours at its edge, fingers trailing the coolness. Breathless and sunlit, I felt something akin to a kind of boyhood dominion, and that the world was mine.

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For more Brandon Schrand and other fine writers, pick up your copy of Issue 47.

Issue 47 is out now! Featuring new work from Lydia Millet, Gary Snyder, and Elizabeth Wurtzel, plus an interview with Michael Ondaatje. Look for it in your local bookstore or order a copy online.

Congratulations to the winners of our 2009 Contests in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry.