(already seen)
it’s hard for me when my dead return in my dreams vibrant, healthy not knowing they’re already gone or perhaps it’s me who’s made the jump, done the traveling, challenged the dimensions, gone to the spirit world where it’s like how I imagined déjà vu when I was seven years old another complete universe all of us on Mars just one second ahead of all of us on Earth and sometimes a slippage a leaking from the container too full to hold it...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of May 13 (Retirement)
While many people spend every working day dreaming of retirement, upon actually retiring, they may discover new challenges. This week our contributors explore the mixed feelings that can arise: “Old Man” by Michael Lee Johnson, a portrait in poem form of a senior writer at his beachfront home. “Retirement” by Gwendolyn Jensen, a poem about the feelings of uselessness that can accompany retirement. “Retirement: Phase II” by Susan Knox, an essay about the way retirement can change a...
Read MoreRetirement: Phase II
At age seventy and after thirty-six years of marriage, I am in a new relationship. He’s seventy-three, tall, lean, intelligent, curious, and kind. He’s got boyish charm, and when he laughs, his blue eyes sparkle. We share a love of good food and wine; we enjoy the theater, dance, jazz, college basketball, chamber music, and movies. We’re solitary types, readers, and we can be quiet together. My new love is my old husband, Weldon, and since his retirement four years ago, we’ve been redefining our relationship. It hasn’t been easy, and the challenge took me by surprise. When Weldon...
Read MoreRetirement
He had woven out a net, had woven it with the measure of his touch and tongue, loose, exuberant, he had thrown it out upon the width of day, had flung it forth, had given to his time a tongue, had worked had lived largely on this earth; his emblems now are gone, his songs are sung, the children of his listening. He is a songbird caught in a net, its head hung down, a stranger murmuring to himself, turbulent,...
Read MoreOld Man
Old man in a near empty house bridge port to the sea— (mortgage foreclosure assured) late in his payments to life, sits in a lavender lawn chair meant for picnics or poor people— pillows stuffed under his bum like layers of sponge cake. He sits at a handmade wooden desk he forged with his own hands finished in lacquer with the edges of his fingers tips. He types prismatic words forced together like a jagged Japanese poem or something resembling a Haiku forgery— while 2 Persian cats, Tambala and Shebelle, meow constantly with passion with pain, with hunger— bowls empty, food dried,...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of May 6 (Mother’s Day)
In recognition of Mother’s Day, which is coming up on Sunday, May 12, this week we are featuring a range of pieces about mothers and motherhood: “Nymph in the Bathtub,” an essay by Lynne Huffer, delves into the mixed emotions of a daughter whose mother is dealing with a medical problem. “Nature’s New Generation,” a flash-humor piece by Jennifer A. Powers, delivers a clever punch line. “Mother Psalm 3,” a poem by Rachel Barenblat, contemplates the experience of a baby in the womb. “Choking Up,” a short story by Melissa Pheterson,...
Read More