Month: February 2020

(after Thanksgiving by Aimee Nezhukumatathil) I juggle a can of tomatoes, three limes, and a bag of potatoes. Ahead is he who holds a block of cheddar and a bottle of wine. Broad shoulders face forward, below his clean-shaven...

Like the opening scene in a Broadway play we met, you won’t remember, in a hotel lobby. Blustery cold outside, I’d taken refuge in overstuffed chairs, mahogany tables, paneled walls, low lights. I settled in, ordered wine,...

Thank you for sixty-six years of service, for withstanding a life of bombardment: first it was sugar then drilling and filling but you kept going through one challenge after another, got your crown of enameled glory and fought...

one white face in herd of velvet-black cows, tall goat straight legged on trunk of rusty car rough grey grass, sky thick with lofty clouds hanging over treeless expanse, snow sprinkled brush– April in...

warmish breeze touches bursting new leaves rosebuds emerge from snowmelt and I, wearing new black patent shoes straw hat with yellow cloth daisies and pink cotton candy coat have a good reason to go to church After a career in...

The roadrunner cartoon over, The movie previews done, The lights finally went down, When a tall, looming silhouette, Big and strong like John Wayne, Came up the darkened aisle of the old Ritz Theatre in the spring of 1968, when...

A phonograph on the high-top table and a conductor’s baton. Unless you slide the cabinet door, reach in, you will not guess the favorite record he would play, cueing his invisible orchestra. Still in front, hair-wild Toscanini,...

Pardon our dust, excuses the hospital lobby, my son and I (here for flu shots) directed to a makeshift fourth-floor lab. Stepping off the elevator to a humming nurses’ station, we eye doorways triangled open down the corridor....

Here is a chair; there a music stand–– atop its ledge, a scribbled map of what we will become. And who is the first to grace the stage? Lady of the amber harp, her spike heels anchored, her toes tapping the pedals. The twang and...

At dawn’s pink tinge we heard the bell, unzipped from sleeping bags to pull ourselves from bunks, iced feet to planks, donning sweatshirts. The cabin door banged as we ran to climb the corral fence, perched and watched the...

You did not imagine rising in the dark,  slipping on the hardwood, falling. You must have tripped over the book you were reading before you slept or was it your wobbly ankle? You did not know how alone you would feel sprawled at...