Month: April 2013

At Times Upon a Time

By Julie Shavin

Posted on

I reply it was a storybook childhood no not as in Princess Bride
just money enough for food piano lessons a dog new clothes
a yearly vacation that kind of thing and naturally there were
the few times in the middle of dinner my mother drew a knife
from the drawer in order to end herself but I don’t remember
those well maybe not at all though I do recall the shininess
and little points yes serrations I later learned and my father
with his hands out in a stop stop and and also a more than
usual problem in getting our broccoli down the three of us
wide-eyed in steakus interruptus and the dog sniffing terror
a bit less tantalizing than snippets of scrap cushioning himself
suddenly in a collective unconscious of couch our father still
pleading no please let’s just … there that’s good just smile
and pass the ketchup and it was over until the next time
going smoothly to cleanup with the floor vacuum
and its wicked wonderful sound signifying another meal
successfully ingested and popcorn on the way the machines
so comforting being in the end all under her control
one night bleeding into the next and in the morning the usual
coffee aroma the dark savior awakened from slumber in the
cupboard all night long above the you-know drawer and off
to school with us after the first cup and then on to all the rest
it was quite full that pot so I knew what she was doing as I boarded
the bus and undid my locker chatting away on a storybook day
never thinking what might happen if she jumped suddenly to grab
the phone and spilled the coffee one doesn’t in retrospect think
that far ahead or behind and truth is anything can be part of
anything like the tiny reflections and refractions dancing like
so many gemstones right there in a kitchen in storybook suburbs
where a woman who wants to die lives the same day over and again
for decades as there are rules so she swallows them like bitter beans
and gets on with fixing beds and tossing laundry and now
she lives and thrives and my father relaxed now
his hands clasped as with some cherished book
upon the chest his final chapter gasped long long ago.…

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First Gulf War

By Matthew Dexter

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We were huffing rubber cement behind the hunchback of the art teacher when the
principal opened the door and told me that Dad was dead. She whispered
something into the purple ear of the teacher and ushered me away from my
table. A few minutes of commiseration beside the kiln, the smell of onions on
wrinkled lips, warm against my pimpled flesh, she told me Dad died in a plane crash.

The kids could not see me. Their laughter was subdued because the ominous
ponytail of the principal loomed: its coconut shampoo sculpting atoms. I could smell the
bagel she was digesting from lunch, her deodorant, the cream cheese. Obstinate sesame
seed was lodged between her upper incisors.

I insisted on returning to class, and upon my arrival, hit the bottle hard.

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Plant No Trees in the Garden

By Howard Waldman

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One November day, just after he’d bedded Emily, his wife timidly suggested

planting a walnut tree. He was the one who planted, tended and knew.

He consulted his specialized books and explained, in simplified terms, the factors
that ruled out the operation: inappropriate soil, early frosts, the voracity of
squirrels, the walnut prone to sixty-four diseases. Anyhow the garden was too
small for something that size. Marie-Louise, Albertine, Agnes, Madame Hardy and
all his other precious sun-loving old roses (he called them “my ladies”) would take
umbrage at the intrusion.

His final argument was that the walnut took fifteen years to bear. He didn’t add
that with his heart condition he’d never taste one of the walnuts, unlike her, ten
years younger and never so much as a sniffle.…

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10/11

By Kate Healey

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“My father was born on this day,

Though I know not the year,

I have never committed my name to a birthday card for my father,

Nor did he elect to commit his name to me.

I have compiled a concise collection of facts:

As modest as a grocery list,

As neutral as bread or jam.

His brother’s name is Martin.

his penmanship was a tragedy.

In my possession are two photographs,

Taken from a distance and an odd angle,

But still I see the strange, striking resemblance,

and it is striking to resemble a stranger.”

Kate Healey

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Small Miracles

By John Grey

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I was there, a witness, saw the long-haired holy man
perform miracles in between ranting and raving.
Who cares if he smells like sheep, when one wave
of a scarred hand can bring a bus after I’ve been
waiting half an hour. Or a half-hissed prayer through
rotting teeth can provide a beautiful young woman
in a slinky red dress, also going the same way.
And what a phenomenon he has produced with
just the twist of a blood-shot eye, the squirreling
of a red nose… I have exact change and she does too.
So it really doesn’t matter that he speaks in a language
neither of us understand or that the Bible in his hand is
so battered, so dog-eared, that it begins with Psalms
and 1 Corinthians must do for Revelations.

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