Kenyon Review – Winter 2024: The Winter 2024 issue of The Kenyon Review includes an essay by Carrie Cogan, the winner of the 2023 Kenyon Review Nonfiction Contest, selected by Leslie Jamison; work by the 2021 Kenyon Review Developmental Editing Fellows, Allison Albino, Emily Stoddard, and Jane Walton; poetry by Sara Abou Rashed, Sarah Ghazal Ali, David Joez Villaverde, and Kim Garcia; fiction by K-Ming Chang, Melissa Yancy, and Brian Ma; nonfiction by Oz Johnson and Sarah Minor; and much more. The cover art is by DARNstudio, which consists of Ron Norsworthy and David Anthone.

Lowest of the Low on a High Red Hill

By Carrie Cogan

I rode west with a childhood friend who was driving to a job in California. We passed through Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and still there was no sign of the Commander. My friend placed a bag of chocolate-covered espresso beans on the console between us, jumble of rich dark gems, glittering like they were wet. I crunched them in my teeth without thinking. Sometimes I drove and let her sleep. When clouds clotted the sun her hair still glowed, some mix of orange and yellow and pink. Toast, or the honey for it, or the cinnamon.  

After we spent a day and a night in a certain desert town, I told my friend to go on without me. I’d stay. The town was bordered by empty hills and endless sky: room to disappear. I found an unopened pack of Juicy Fruit gum on the sidewalk, which I took for a sign.