I recognize that I may be a tad more sensitive to the prospect of police state behavior than the average Jo but I come by this extra helping of unease naturally. Because of his liberal politics my dad, Marcus Raskin, earned a permanent spot on J. Edgar Hoover’s radar. Bigly. Dad was the frequent object of surveillance and dirty tricks. (He even had his own covert agent assigned to him when he worked as an adviser in the White House—something I discovered in college when I accidentally dated a guy whose father was that agent.) … Continue reading Push Back, Breathe, Repeat: A Brief Bio by Erika Raskin→
In his slightly madcap, secretly serious, mystery novel, I Shot the Buddha, Colin Cotterill, on the very first page, describes three types of “cinematic plot devices” that his protagonists find annoying: coincidences, which he labels as “coming in third,” behind first (or second?) convenient amnesia, and second (or first) the sudden appearance of an identical twin. Somehow my attention got snagged on that last (but possibly first) objection, sufficiently not to notice that he slyly went on to say, “but after all this was real life.” I was ready, as it were, to debate the … Continue reading The Sudden Appearance of an Identical Twin→
In my almost 80 years it seems as if I have lived numerous lives because the world has changed so swiftly under my feet. My world now as a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, pastor’s wife and poet could not be more wildly different than my first world as a child in the near wilderness of rural Michigan. But as crooked and wandering as the path was, those early days are instrumental to who I am now. The first house we lived in after moving to rural Michigan from Chicago in 1942 when I was … Continue reading A Vast Bloom of Light→
For most of my youth, I lived in a secure blanket of belonging. I belonged to the groups of people that surrounded me at my school and church: white Christians, married couples with children (children like me), and suburban homeowners. I learned from my parents and other adults who the “bad” people were. I knew that when adults lowered their voice to talk about somebody, it indicated disapproval. As a child, I could never have imagined that one day I would become the very person they were disparaging. Yet that’s exactly what I did. Since … Continue reading Open-Mic Poetry Night→
Dimithry Victor, a junior at South Plantation High School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, continues to create original and intriguing images, now inspired by personal dreams and Pop art. He draws with pen and ink and digital tools, combining them with media sources. “Recently,” says Victor, “I have been exploring collages and Pop art from images I see in my dreams. I usually write down what I see in my dream, then I cut out figures from magazines, and get digital backgrounds online, or any source I can find, to recreate the dream … Continue reading New Dream Works by Dimithry Victor→
In my old age, I have become an artist’s model. Every couple of months, I remove all metal adorning my body, enter a radiation-proof inner sanctum, climb up on a conveyor belt that carries me into a cavernous machine and a radiation artist makes images of my brain. The images are preserved in the Cloud, potentially for posterity. *** How terrible is nostalgia for one’s former self. There I am dancing down city streets like Gene Kelly in Paris. Healthy and fit. Ready for adventure and new friends. Oblivious to clouds floating up over the … Continue reading Excerpts From A Life: Margaret Klosko→
You have stalked about fifty agents and know what they like with their toast and where their poodles get their haircuts. The ten minutes you got to spend with some of them at writers’ conferences bought you nothing but sweat. Your queries have been answered with one-liners by robots: “Thanks, but no thanks.” You’re likely wondering why me! as you wash and dry an ice pick before you plunge it through your ear. Wait, don’t do that yet. Put it down. Let’s talk. I must note that I have the credibility of a divorced marriage counselor … Continue reading Resources for Writers Series: How to Bubble Up to the Surface of the Slush Pile→
I first read Elizabeth Bishop’s “The Fish” when I was in college. Five American Poets was the course, taught by a ruddy-faced Midwestern professor who began class by reading aloud a poem, often reciting it from memory. We were to sit and listen, book closed, before discussing anything. His sonorous voice hung in the air, like a small plane flying low over crops on a hot summer afternoon, his words trailing like a lazy line of smoke across the sky. The physical pleasure surprised me, the low hum of language a warm breeze on my … Continue reading “The Fish”, A Love Story by Mary Esselman→
As a child, one of the most thrilling things to me was the story my father told about how he, at the age of ten, first encountered Indians on a dusty road near the Flandreau Santee Indian Reservation in South Dakota. He had been sent to live with relatives who homesteaded there after his mother died in the flu epidemic in 1918. These were almost fantasies to me, stories which transported me away from my insular life on a small lake in rural Michigan. But to him this was his real and often tragic life. … Continue reading The Indian Lady Who Lived in a Quonset Hut→
In a word: Yes. In their defense they did save me from a slow, painful wasting away. I was under 100 pounds when I got them—and it’s not the lungs’ fault, exactly. It’s the drugs I take to keep my body from rejecting them. After 28 years of dealing with cystic fibrosis I was losing my footing; my health was declining. Quickly. The steepest part of the slope began with a massive hemoptysis, a fun episode consisting of coughing up handfuls of blood all over the bathroom. My husband, whose go-to stress relief is cleaning, … Continue reading Do These New Lungs Make Me Look Fat?→
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