Nan Sanders Pokerwinski was a science writer at the Detroit Free Press for more than a decade, and she worked as a science writer for the University of Michigan News Service for fourteen years. She’s been a contributing editor to Health and Alternative Medicine magazines and has written for More, Fitness, Dallas Morning News, and other print and online publications. Her journalistic byline is Nancy Ross-Flanigan and she’s received a Pulitzer nomination and several awards.
What awards has Mango Rash won so far? How did you come to write it and how long did it take?
Mango Rash won first place in the memoir/nonfiction category of the 2018 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Awards and was a finalist for the Northern Colorado Writers Top of the Mountain Book Award, the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Awards (twice), and the 43rd New Millennium Writings Literary Awards.…
The church made of ice did not melt despite
the air so hot it smelled like breath exhaled from a mouth full of never-brushed
teeth. Children loosed in the park to
traumatize one another on the monkey bars and cargo nets were the first to see
it, eyes glazing down the long hill as they kicked high on the swings whose
rubber seats burned the undersides of their thighs. They stared and pointed, then screeched for
their harried caregivers, who allowed themselves to be yanked down the path
that drizzled into the valley marking the middle of the park, where a pair of
tattered and abused baseball fields sprouted weeds along the baselines. The dugouts were home to tetanus, used
condoms, empty beer cans.
When the first mother saw what her son was
gawking at, yanking her arm so hard she thought her shoulder would pop out of
its socket, she felt the blood leave her head, the perspiration caked at her
hairline evaporating like a fine mist. …
You’ve told me more about Saturday nights than I want to know. Fridays were big at our house: paycheck, bar, pan to the crown when he came home swinging. The morning after was like church a day early: guilt. Always
a headache in cast iron, no buses but two cars in the driveway, a stack of bills paid for during the week. By the fifth day, he wanted to be a child again, swagger like a teen inside a middle
aged paunch, expectations for life thwarted by time and poor decisions, a father, lost and overboard in a leaky life boat, briefly sharing provisions while eyeing the life preservers and the oars.
The cat crouched in
the corner of the tent hissing, drawing in its scent if it could. She stared
fixedly at Abdullah while he painted the final card. He lifted it up and waved it
in the air to dry.
Nardil nearly
snatched the card from Abdullah’s hand, while gathering up the rest of the set.
The boy raced toward the flap, clutching them tightly in his fist. He turned
once to look at the artist and was gone.
Nardil ran through
the coming dust storm toward the Mamluk General’s luxurious tent. He was proud
to have the task of presenting the tarot to the great man. He high-stepped even
though his scrawny legs were getting caught up in his tattered clothes.
Safiya, his younger
sister, crouched outside the artist’s tent, waiting for him.…
I have been singing the same song in my head for twenty minutes now. It’s not that it’s my favorite song or that I don’t know lyrics to any others. I don’t know why I feel so compelled to sing it, but I do know that it was three minutes and seven seconds long and that its title was five words long. I also knew that if I picked up a rock to examine it, I would have to start the chorus over again because I would be too perplexed on which way the rock should sit to think about the words. North, south, left, or right, either way it wasn’t how it should be situated and….shit. It’s the troll again. …
