The Turn
Though my mother is long dead, my sister estranged, I cannot account for the specter. After over forty years, the image, the memory returns to me lately, haunting my afternoon routine, all its edges garishly distinct. The turn began at the end of summer, nineteen-seventy- two or three, the last tubing and camping trip with the Buskirk and Weaver kids, The Caves at Millwood, along the muddy Kokosing River. After one too many days of fun, fun, fun, of hotdogs and marshmallows, hair and tee shirts reeking of smoke, sticky nights in rank sleeping bags, no showers, no television, the mighty,...
Read MoreShe Knew
Although well-versed in leafy academe, she knew they helped her not at all, those skills — to parse, to rhyme a scheme, to sketch a plot, to hear the dying fall of scribbled footsteps echoing in the growing gloom. Though of an age meetly deemed maturing, she knew that mice-like lines which grow along the very bottom of a page signified, at last, quite next to naught; that, frail or strong, old age should rightly rage through the lengthening night, should strive to flame and flare and cut the darkness clean to filaments of light. Though learned in the very rare and rarefied imaginings...
Read MoreAhab’s Crew
— Boarding School, 1980 October flares in western PA. In rumpled uniforms boys mock each other around the oak table, two chairs lean daringly on back legs. The schoolmaster shows up late on black mornings, the beret tipped wide on his high forehead and a tweed jacket dangling from his hunched shoulder. Twice he clears his throat, a voice more trusted than their own fathers, before reading out loud from Moby Dick. Thin smoke rises from the hot ember at his fingertips. Half-listening, they slouch with their hair hurling round their heads, look up at his moving lips, pausing...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Nov. 16 (Life Stages)
The way we see the world can be strongly influenced by our age and our particular point in our life’s path, as this week’s contributors illustrate. “Who I Wanted to Be,” a poem by Judith Ann Levinson, presents a delicate portrait of a child’s hopes for her future. The poem “Wildflowering” by John Zedolik praises the beauty in imperfection that a teenager would overlook. In the short story, “The Bridge to Restitution,” Joe Ducato depicts a group of adolescent friends whose adult destinies draw closer. “For What It’s Worth,” a story by Stuart...
Read MoreInjured Shadow (v3)
In nakedness of life moves this male shadow worn out dark clothes, ill fitted in distress, holes in his socks, stretches, shows up in your small neighborhood, embarrassed, walks pastime naked with a limb in open landscape space— damn those worn out black stockings. He bends down prays for dawn, bright sun. Hear Michael reading his own...
Read MoreFor What It’s Worth
Woolworths at Cedarbrook Mall, just outside my home town of Philadelphia, didn’t look like much, but that was beside the point. Back in the Sixties, it was a great place for teenagers like me to visit during trips to the mall, especially the variety store’s record cut-out bin. Filled with carelessly tossed-in crap, near-crap, and the occasional gem, at 33 cents for a 45-rpm single, a buck for an LP, it invited those long on musical thirst and short on cash to find keys to their universe. One afternoon in 1968, I found one of mine, a rare version of Buffalo Springfield’s self-titled...
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