Rehearsals
Why do I hold my clean hands under hot water until they sting? My tongue aches from rehearsals. Silver chutes shoot my open eyes. Stiff slanting wings lift our bodies resting above clouds — breathing, dreaming. Trust loosens our shoes, unpegs belts cinched around our expanding profit motives. Trust will settle us down to Earth. Bright shields of elastic goose flesh. Wet maps wrinkle in my hot palms. I would dovetail all my hinges! Lets love our flaws above each wave. Counting freckles until we land...
Read MoreThe Wrong Kiiid Died
Four o’clock in the morning before the world wakes up; freshness in the air, the light beginning to peek through the darkness of night, headlights on, radio off. Mumbling my lines, I drive reasonably fast. Sixty miles per hour is reasonably fast; no tickets for me. Wind tossing my hair, gray by now, slight elevation of spirit, a sense of purpose in the air, driving to work; not any kind of work. Film work, the movie business, so different from the usual notion of work, offers a certain degree of adventure that most jobs do not. Meanwhile, plenty of time; nerves aren’t frazzled,...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of Jan. 18 (News)
While some draw inspiration from personal experience, others find source material in local, national or global events, as this week’s contributors illustrate. “Headlines” by Kevin J.B. O’Connor encapsulates some of the major themes from recent newscasts. “To Pete Rose” by Joey Nicoletti finds a personal connection to a sports legend. “Approaching comet” by Douglas J. Lanzo highlights a recurring science phenomenon. “The Cemetery Gardeners” by J. Novalis Wolfe may be set in any age, moving on from war to find...
Read MoreThe Cemetery Gardeners
Last Friday noon we planted cherry trees in the town On a moist lawn for those lost limbs and foundered souls of war. We laid them round, our cherry trees, heeling soon in place By the gate, like green apostles bound in burlap robes. And then with usual care, we champed the sodden earth— Heaving clay, until a stiff procession of barreled steel Passed by; or rather, a big new funeral play complete With chaplain chiming Latin; or come to think, was it Greek? Then boomed three salvos sounding like spit’n damnation. We rested blades and stared as brassy music blared Up and filled the vacuum...
Read MoreApproaching comet
Approaching comet speeds with icy gas exhaust as it nears our Sun in its faithful pilgrimage tithing cosmic gas and dust.
Read MoreTo Pete Rose
Dear Mr. Rose: even though you told me to get lost when I asked you for your autograph, politely, at Shea Stadium when I was a teenager, I still hope you are enshrined in Cooperstown someday, because having more knocks than Ty Cobb or anyone else is almost as spectacular of an achievement as my mother teaching herself and her parents how to speak, read and write English as a first generation Italian American, in a chippy game of cultural assimilation where there was no seventh inning...
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