Electricity’s Ghost
By 1966 I still hadn’t read a book, thought history was for dead people, math for those who didn’t count, and that there were three sexes: men, women, and nuns. And now, for Junior year, the worst of the worst: Sister Johanna would engineer English, slap down Speech, and herd us into Home Room where, one day, she’d tell my friend, Paul, that he wasn’t worth the postage it would take to send him out of the country. All summer I listened to Dylan’s “Visions of Johanna” for guidance but learned only that the “ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her...
Read MoreFather John Clermont’s Hands
His hoary hands hang like fish. Unexpressed, they fall from his wrists like lake pike caught and up strung with lidless staring eyes aft hung. Unaware with his lifeless extremities, of the shook light bursting by degrees of epidermal hemorrhage of bright and shine squinting through pores and life lines; A miasmal kaleidoscope of forgotten tales; of hands healing and soothing others’ travails; of Christ’s use of John’s hands to bless God’s folk; raised a thousand times to lighten their yoke. His hands, swollen with years and a bit stiff with age, still...
Read MoreOn the Limbic Art of Time
For Liberty This three-month wheaten cairn’s old soul whose middle name might be Cajole has sniffed out all my tick-tock past. She’s stopped the clock. Time’s far surpassed by all she does to entertain — to coach my heart and limbic brain — with capers played throughout the day at which I am her protégé. Passion...
Read MoreCherry Picking
Two cherries, dimpled and cleft, bright red, in a wishbone hanging. Pick them, pick them not. Transfixing beauty of a 1920s Italian aperitif ad, lovers joined over a cool summer Campari. But most are lonely, single, ripe, waiting. Pick the low ones first, they are easy. The proud ones, mature crimson, at the top of the tree, leave for the blue jays who only come one at a time and don’t take much. Passion...
Read MorePossibilities
In the first parallel universe I took my father’s advice studied pharmacy at the University of Buffalo moved to New Jersey to work for Pfizer and have lived here ever since. In another one Sister Emiliette managed to convince me during the eighth grade retreat. Now I awaken each morning at six, put on the white and black, go down to chapel, take my place at the organ. In May I’ll make my final vows. In the next I came of age amid the lilacs of Christ Church Meadow watching the spring regatta. After one year of walks among the domes and spires I decided to stay. ...
Read MoreThe Monkey Chronicles
We took a stroll by the water, and Mabel was clinging to my arm. I was younger then. I was living in an elevator on Tomilson Street in the Bay District. All day, when I wasn’t sightseeing with Mabel, I went up and down that elevator… though never past the seventh floor. It is possible I was waiting for the Muse, but it is also possible that the Muse had disguised itself once again as a monkey. I didn’t care for monkeys then, or now, but at least there weren’t that many of them by the bay. That was the year Mabel was practicing witchcraft on the...
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