In June of 2007, I watched the movie Once with you. We’d rented the DVD from Blockbuster, the way people did then. We were twenty-one, so dinner meant sharing a bag of corn chips, drinking Coronas, and sitting on that funky old couch I bought cheap at an estate sale. That was back when we were still a couple living together in Seattle, and we’d only ever been with each other, and we loved each other, but we wondered what else was out there. And in the movie Once, two musicians meet in Dublin, a … Continue reading Mulioo Tebe by Clare Rolens→
At the Concourse End of the Sky Bridge Discombobulated by my inability to sleep on a plane arcing across the wind-tossed top edge of Europe, the next thing I know we are making an unscheduled stop and I’m in a stop-and-start line where each passenger is being greeted in their native language by a woman who, when I get to her (she’s smiling) says to me, Welcome Good Morning, and I walk away marveling at not only the urge I am feeling to return to the back of the line so I can hear her … Continue reading At the Concourse-End of the Sky Bridge and Can I Pay Next Month What I Owe This Month?, 2 poems by Ben Sloan→
My writing mantra used to be, Fine is good enough. I made sure whatever I sent out was the best it could be. However, I worked fulltime and was the primary caretaker for three children. When I finished a manuscript, I checked for issues, then hit “send” before anyone came down with croup, required a ride to music lessons, or needed four zillion forms signed. I never lingered at the finish line, which meant some manuscripts went out not quite fully polished. You’ve heard of the tyranny of the urgent? Those years, I happened to … Continue reading Don’t Arrive Before You Get There by Deborah M. Prum→
for Thelonious Monk I have a table for one at The Five Spot Cafe. Monk is on stage with Miles Davis and Art Blakey. No one in his band disturbs the jazz genius, or waits for him to speak to them when his mood is no brighter than his E Flat Minor. His melodies are the words his black fingers play on black and white keys for a black and white crowd, with a band always ready to follow Monk’s lead. He may change a play at the line of scrimmage, sending Blakey in … Continue reading ‘Round Midnight by Terry Huff→
1842 On a Midwestern tour to drum up support for a second presidential run, Martin Van Buren had the bad fortune of passing through Plainfield, Indiana. A year and a half before, Van Buren had been swept out of office. The Panic of 1837, the worst economic depression in the country’s short history, had so frightened and upset voters that they’d elected the sixty-eight-year-old war hero William Henry Harrison, sending Van Buren out into the wilderness, political and otherwise. The people of Plainfield had a local beef with Van Buren. Tucked away in in what … Continue reading Stop the Car by Scott Weaver→
I find it hard to write a condolence letter, not a note, but a letter. And three condolence letters wait for me. They sit like black crows on a fence, cawing, scolding. I delay, stall, guilt-gnawed and sometimes, I admit, never write the letter in time. Instead, I email or call. Not the same! My fear is that my condolence will be a minefield of cliches. I saved a letter from the Palliative Care Social Services counselor at the Motion Picture and Television Home sent after my husband died five years ago. I remembered it … Continue reading On Writing A Condolence Letter by Trudy Hale→
Windchill, the minor key that blows in with the horns Tremolo, a shimmer of ice, the roads we drive to rehearsal Crunchy German, heftig, Plötzlich, the sounds of our boots on the snow towards the hall Six flats, icicles hanging by the wall of clef The thaw of Adagietto— sehr langsam open-heart surgery And, on the way to the garage, our tears freezing for this unfathomable life. Australian-born Katrin Talbot’s collection The Devil Orders A Latte was just released from Fernwood Press and The Square Footage of Awe is forthcoming from Kelsay Books. Falling Asleep … Continue reading Playing Mahler at Minus Twenty by Katrin Talbot→
It is two weeks past Mother’s Day, late afternoon, when I see a doe on the neighboring pasture. Light slices across the grass from its peach horizon, nearly blinding. Around the fringes of haze, I see there is also a tiny fawn with noodle-like legs behind the doe, and a few feet away, the neighbor’s small bulldog bluff-barking the two of them. The doe does something that I’ve never seen her do before in her elegant tiptoe strolls—she lifts one leg and hooves the ground, then the other leg, same motion. Her head thrusts forward … Continue reading Finding Isabella by Sharon Perkins Ackerman→
……………………………………………..Collision risks are growing every year ……………………………………………..as the number of objects in orbit ……………………………………………..around Earth proliferate. ………………………………………………………………………—CNN How can prayers make it through 130 million pieces of space junk careening and colliding at 18,000 miles per hour in an orbital graveyard bits of broken satellites, the remains of booster rockets and wreckage from weapons tests As violence spreads like head lice more and more prayers swirl the skies jostling and jiggling to make it to heaven and petition the Lord please one night without sirens ………….wailing us awake let my daughter learn to walk ………….on … Continue reading Space Junk by Claire Scott→
The spirit room is cold, not morgue-cold but goosebump chilly from October on. Maddie zips her hoodie and pulls the under-desk heater dangerously close to the soles of her dying Nikes. There’s a hole forming above her big, left toe and if she smells melting rubber, there will be a bigger hole in her budget. New shoes will have to get in line. The positions she had tried for, production artist, illustrator, assistant gallery curator, never materialized, and she’s stuck in the basement of the Sabine River precinct as a bottom-dwelling, part-time police sketch artist, … Continue reading The Spirit Room by Claire Massey→
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