Happy Thursday, everyone! As we’ve been introducing you all over these past few weeks to our very own Editorial Council members, we haven’t forgotten about the series we started in our first official post here on the site. Now that you have a bit more of a sense of who’s behind this website and the Laughing Medusa magazine itself, we’d like to continue our nod to past contributors by making this throwback series a weekly affair.

If you’re playing catch-up, as part of the celebration for our new online home this year,
we’ve started featuring a selection of some of our favorite pieces from previous print
issues of our magazine. Each piece has been selected by a member of our Editorial
Council, who’ve been kind enough to tell us why they love it (and why they hope you
will, too). If this week’s choice or any others leave you wanting more—and we hope they
do—be sure to check out the full version of our latest issue, now available online under
that “Our Current Issue” tab you’ll find above.

This week the poem below was chosen by the lovely Rose. Here’s what she
had to say about it:

One of the pieces in our spring 2017 publication I find myself going back to is “Gravel Roads” by Claire Kramer. Its soft nostalgia is both endearing and powerful. The vagueness of the narrative voice and the sweet image of the siblings in the backseat are poignant, opening my own warm, hazy childhood memories, when I held simple convictions and loved without restraint.

Read on for the full poem:

Gravel Roads
There is one car ride I
remember so vividly
For no remarkable
reason
I have no idea where
we were going
Canada, Vermont, New Hampshire
it was cold, the family
all together
my head started to
droop with tired eyes,
and landed on your
shoulder
There is always the moment
where you wonder
If you’ll be allowed to
stay
Seconds pass and I feel the
weight of your head lean
onto my own
In that squished backseat,
I was still little
but I knew I could hold you