Short Works by PC Writers

Short works by RPCVs that do not reference the Peace Corps experience.

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CONFESSIONAL POEMS AND VIGNETTES by Thomas Syre (Ethiopia)
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“Families — Four Stories” by Kathy Coskran (Ethiopia)
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“Get That Man A Chair!” by Michael Varga (Chad)
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“The Glamour” — a short story by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)
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“I Had A Hero” by Mike Tidwell (Zaire)
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“Why a Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize the Peace Corps”
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“The Sunny Side” by Ryan Gahris (Ethiopia)
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Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Remembers Jerry Stiller & Cameroon
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“The Yang of Travel: Traveling Solo” by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala)
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“How to Destroy a Government” by George Packer (Togo)
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A Writer Writes — “Africa Delivers” by Bob Criso (Africa)
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A Writer Writes: “Trauma in Togo” by Mark Wentling (Honduras)
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“Mexico” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay) in The Oddville Press, Fall 2019
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“Rent Check” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)
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A Writer Writes — “Why Trees Aren’t Just Colorful” by Roger K. Lewis (Tunisia)

CONFESSIONAL POEMS AND VIGNETTES by Thomas Syre (Ethiopia)

New book —  Confessional Poems and Vignettes: Revisited by Thomas Syre, Sr. (Ethiopia 1972-74) Independently Published 94 pages January 2024 $15.00 (Paperback)   Revisited is a collection of poems and vignettes revised and added to a collection of fiction first published in 2020 during the pandemic. Syre’s latest collection, written in the Fall of 2023, reflects on his life as a boy, a son, a man, a husband, and a father. He writes about his time as an active-duty peacetime Marine overseas. He also writes about his years in Ethiopia first with the Peace Corps as a young Volunteer and then his productive retirement years as a university professor of public health. The collection speaks to his personal, familial, and professional, regrets, failures, brokenness, and successes in life.

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“Families — Four Stories” by Kathy Coskran (Ethiopia)

  Families — Four Stories by Kathy Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67)   Families are complicated. We all have them, somewhere, somehow. Families are formed in many ways, none are perfect, all are heartfelt—and the heart feels pain as well as joy, anxiety as well as comfort, gratitude as well as resentment. There is no one way to portray a family; no idealized family; no perfect family. So these little stories offer snapshots of the idiosyncratic joys and complications of families.     Pearl   The earrings were all she took from her mother’s meager estate and now she had lost one. They were a wedding present from her father to her mother, tiny, perfect pearls set in gold and glued to an earring clip. She wore the earrings almost daily when she was a child. They were the central ornament in her dress-up fantasies, a gift from the king, she would proclaim . . .

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“Get That Man A Chair!” by Michael Varga (Chad)

By Michael Varga (Chad 1977-79) 1995 In 1995 at the G-7 Summit in Halifax (Canada), Secretary of State Warren Christopher was meeting with the Japanese finance minister. Somehow the official notetaker did not show up, and I, lingering at the site as the control officer for U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, got pulled into the meeting to take notes. When I entered, the two delegations were already seated. I saw no vacant chairs, so I crouched down in a corner and opened my notebook. Secretary Christopher started to welcome the Japanese delegation, then stopped midsentence, and said in a loud voice, “Get that man a chair!” After the meeting ended, the two delegations marched off to their limousines, and I stood on the curb. I was unsure about my next step. I was serving as the economic officer at U.S. Consulate General/Toronto, and had been sent on temporary duty to . . .

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“The Glamour” — a short story by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)

By Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80)   Lace likes how Deed touches her tits. His hands, cupping and brushing, send electric squigglies through her body. But it’s not just that, really it’s how the touch is like talking. Deed’s touch is part of the conversation they are always having about Sausalito. They’ll live on a boat, eat fish, get tanned, fuck under the stars. They’ll be their own avatars. The pictures are so vivid in Lace’s mind, she’s pretty sure she’ll slit her wrists if something goes wrong and they don’t go there. “So is Calhoun this son of a bitch’s first name or his last name?” “I don’t know. I don’t care.” Calhoun is Rhonda’s latest mistake. Rhonda is Lace’s mother. She specializes in getting things wrong. Rhonda won’t come out and say it, but she intends to invite Calhoun to move in. The dude has no job and even . . .

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“I Had A Hero” by Mike Tidwell (Zaire)

  IN ONE HAND HE CARRIED a spear, in the other a crude machete. On his head was a kind of coonskin cap with a bushy tail hanging down in back. Around his neck was a string supporting a leather charm to ward off bad bush spirits. Two underfed mongrel dogs circled his bare feet, panting. “My name is Ilunga,” he said, extending his hand. “My name is Michael,” I said, shaking it. We smiled at each other another moment before Ilunga got around to telling me he had heard my job was to teach people how to raise fish. It sounded like something worth trying, he said, and he wondered if I would come by his village to help him look for a pond site. I said I would and took down directions to his house. The next day the two of us set off into the bush, hunting . . .

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“Why a Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize the Peace Corps”

  By William G. Moseley (Mali 1987–89)   Americans suffer from a tendency to look inward, an affliction recently exacerbated by isolationist political winds as well as the COVID-19 pandemic. Now more than ever, America needs the Peace Corps as a vehicle: for its citizens to engage with and learn from the rest of the world; to cultivate the careers of young people who will be of vital service to the country; and to foster a more climate friendly international development approach. Herewith three arguments for why a Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize this federal agency and key steps to get there. FIRST, the Peace Corps can help the US emerge from four years of isolationism by re-building person-to-person bridges between Americans and other peoples. Since its creation during the Kennedy Administration in 1961, over 240,000 Americans have served as Peace Corps volunteers in 142 countries. While the Peace Corps is . . .

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“The Sunny Side” by Ryan Gahris (Ethiopia)

  Sitting just to be still, unknowingly, atop an ant hill — the spiders above were spinning their silk. Ahead was an untilled meadow, overgrown and waist-high with nettles. Hiding away microscopic marvels — things just being things. Left to be and compete for the simplest of needs. Predisposed to balance between extremes. Day and night. Hot and cold. Dry and wet. Here and there. But, who really cares? As I stared, my eyes unleashed the anti-abyss — the negative imprint of a tired mind, out sick. But once a lone cloud lured my vacant gaze, it bulldozed through the invisible maze. An ink blot set against a blinding blue blaze. Morphing to mirror my revolting cynical state. Inching closer, as if it had something wise to say… The wind whipped in advance to trigger a chill. Every hair was raised to a static standstill. The elevated scent of a . . .

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Mary-Ann Tirone Smith Remembers Jerry Stiller & Cameroon

  With the passing of the most wonderful actor and comedian, Jerry Stiller, I’m reminded of a day back in 1994. I’m hustling down Broadway to get to the West Side Barnes & Noble, where I am one of three contributors to Going Up Country: Travel Essays by Peace Corps Writers to read that night at the bookstore. I looked up and spotted Jerry Stiller coming toward me and as a great fan, I immediately stopped and asked him for his autograph. I was already late, but so what. Jerry was happy to do it, but neither of us had any paper available. So I held out my copy of Going Up Country and told him about the signing. He was full of congratulations. He said that he’d wished he’d joined the Peace Corps and then signed the front endpaper, ‘To Mary Ann. Good thoughts. Love, Jerry Stiller.’ Then he said he was hurrying somewhere or . . .

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“The Yang of Travel: Traveling Solo” by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala)

The Yang of Travel: Traveling Solo by Mark D. Walker (Guatemala 1971–73)   • “What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn’t come every day.” –George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion   I began my global journey in the early ’70s as a Peace Corps Volunteer, training in Ponce, Puerto Rico. What better way to see the world and learn a new language than join the Peace Corps? A lifetime of travel would change me radically as well as those around me. But over the years my decisions on what and how to travel would be changed by the relationship with my wife Ligia. This dynamic was best reflected by the symbol of “Yin & Yang” where a balance is struck between two opposites. The one life lesson I’d come away with as a Peace Corps Volunteer was . . .

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“How to Destroy a Government” by George Packer (Togo)

    “How to Destroy a Government”—In The Atlantic’s April issue, George Packer (Togo 1982-83) reveals how President Trump is winning his war on American institutions, and argues that a second term will irrevocably harm what remains.   How to Destroy a Government When Donald Trump came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited. The new president was impetuous, bottomlessly ignorant, almost chemically inattentive, while the bureaucrats were seasoned, shrewd, protective of themselves and their institutions. They knew where the levers of power lay and how to use them or prevent the president from doing so. Trump’s White House was chaotic and vicious, unlike anything in American history, but it didn’t really matter as long as “the adults” were there to wait out the president’s impulses and deflect his worst ideas and discreetly pocket destructive orders lying around . . .

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A Writer Writes — “Africa Delivers” by Bob Criso (Africa)

A Writer Writes    Africa Delivers by Bob Criso (Nigeria 1966-67, Somalia 1967-68)    My fascination with Africa began when my brother-in-law, Harry, gave me his old stamp collection after he married my sister, Mildred. I was nine years old. It was those East African stamps that fired my imagination at the time — giraffes, flamingoes, and exotic flowers on stamps from places like Tanganyika, Rhodesia, and Madagascar. It sent me to the encyclopedia for my first independent study of geography. In high school, it was the independence movements of the late fifties and early sixties that caught my interest. European colonies in Africa struggling for autonomy and self-government. I was rooting for Kwame Nkrumah and Ghana all the way. Back to the encyclopedia for another independent study, this time in history. Years later, I realized how much these movements paralleled my own struggles for independence at home. After I . . .

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A Writer Writes: “Trauma in Togo” by Mark Wentling (Honduras)

    Trauma in Togo by Mark Wentling (Honduras 1967-69 & Togo 1970-73) Published in American Diplomacy, February 2020 April 1991, while I was serving in Lomé, Togo as the USAID Representative for Togo and Benin, protests in Lomé against the dictatorial regime of President Eyadéma reached the boiling point. One night, President Eyadéma’s barbaric soldiers entered the original neighborhood of Lomé, Bè, and killed a couple dozen people or more. They collected the bodies and threw them into the lagoon which cut across the northern part of old Lomé. Their morbid idea was that when the people saw the dead bodies, they would cease revolting against Eyadéma, his cronies and all for which they stood. The opposite happened. Angrily, the people of Bè gathered the dead bodies and put them in a dump truck. Thousands of people marched with the truckload of bodies from Bè, on the eastern side of . . .

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“Mexico” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay) in The Oddville Press, Fall 2019

    The opening paragraph of “Mexico” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978–80)   IT WAS A CHAIN OF EVENTS, some of them taking place in Foster Raines’ mind and some in the world at large, none more real than another. It started with the death of Methuselah’s baby sister, whose name Foster never could remember. He happened to be sitting in the game room at Loblolly Village when she crossed the threshold on her walker and crashed to the floor dead as a bag of cats. A hundred and seven, people believed her to be, reserved but not unfriendly to the end. Nurses and orderlies rushed to revive her. No luck, unless you considered lucky the feat of expiring in a flash after a healthy century. Watching the commotion from his wheelchair, blanket tucked around his knees, Foster was obliged to look his own death in the face. The outcome . . .

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“Rent Check” by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay)

  Rent Check by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) evergreen magazine • The question was did Janelle fuck Old Ray Taylor so they got the house. Grace drew a quick picture mental picture of herself, the sticks and circles of her that moment. On her knees next to the bathtub, kneecaps aching where they touched the tile floor. Washing Meadow’s hair because something was wrong with her granddaughter, Meadow always forgot where she was so forgot what came next, for example rinse the soap out. On the toilet seat, Grace’s pocketbook. In the pocketbook, a pack of L&M. Against Grace’s better judgment it was December, but so far she was keeping November’s promise not to smoke inside. She was asking herself did her daughter fuck the owner of the house Grace was living but now not smoking in. And how come it mattered so goddamn much. Ha! If she could answer . . .

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A Writer Writes — “Why Trees Aren’t Just Colorful” by Roger K. Lewis (Tunisia)

  Why trees aren’t just colorful fall features for our region’s neighborhoods   by Roger K. Lewis (Tunisia 1964-66) President, Peace Corps Commemorative Foundation The Washington Post Oct. 25, 2019 • October’s changing leaf colors, along with intrusive leaf-blower noise, are signals every year that fall is definitely upon us and winter will be arriving in a few weeks. But these sights and sounds also remind us how wonderfully verdant the nation’s capital is. We are quite fortunate. Few cities match metropolitan Washington’s extraordinary amount of tree-covered, vegetated open space. Thousands of acres of interconnected, stream-valley parks thread around and through the region, which encompasses countless neighborhood public parks varying greatly in size, shape, topography, flora and function. Complementing our urban and suburban public parkland are hundreds of thousands of private outdoor spaces — front yards, backyards, courtyards — all contributing in different ways to the fall color display. Washington is . . .

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