The Bookends Review

Wandering the aisles late at night, picking up this or that, turning it over in consideration only to reject it and drift farther along, Greg finally realized it wasn’t candy or salty snacks that he wanted, but meaning.  The dollar store didn’t stock that.

Ben Roth…

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When I was eight, I developed a theory: if I were a boy, my mother would like me. I found, on a crumpled summer camp form under a school bus seat, a question about whether “your daughter” knew about menstruation or had menstruated. I’d never heard the term (I was in fourth grade but in 1966) so I asked the bus driver what it meant. He turned red and told me to ask my mother. I persisted; he refused to answer. My mother gasped, “You asked the bus driver?” She offered an account of which I understood little except “never speak of this with your brother.” Babies and blood seemed to be involved. At the dinner table, I brought up both, plus the new word, which I pronounced “menyoustration.”…

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They start innocuous, as playful mispronunciations of my surname. I blink and the interactions have escalated to being pinned against a wall and pummelled repeatedly by Jon, Bret, and Joanne while the trio shout at me in unison, collectively demanding the answer to BUT WHERE ARE YOU REALLY FROM as I whimper the “nowhere important” I think they want to hear before realising, too late, that only informational specificity might spare me from a broken nose or bruised ribs.

Does anything good come in three? Really? That’s what we say. It’s a crowd. The Wise Men. The time periods: past, present, future. The fundamental qualities of the universe: time, space, matter.

But just as often, three’s a hindrance. An obstacle, subject to chance. Rock, paper, and scissors.…

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I grew up in the countryside,
on a farm with the nearest
neighbor a quarter mile away.
Every night the stars shone like
unreachable precious jewels
adorning eternity– and I felt
very, very small and yet,
strangely, also very, very old
and more, oh, so much more
than my daytime self drunk
on the petty and the mundane.

Now I live on a quarter acre
with neighbors on my left and
neighbors on my right and
neighbors across the street and
a big city so near it cloaks even
the light of stars at night and
I am left only with the memory
of eternity….

– L.j. Carber…

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I have an unhealthy obsession with the act of brewing coffee in my Mr. Coffee electric drip coffee machine. Why do I prefer this method to a single-serving Keurig or buying coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts or Starbucks on the way to work?

For one, nostalgia tugs at me, as I remember my deceased parents and how they taught me how to make coffee. When I was young, my dad worked as a salesman at the local Sears store, while my mom started her banking career on the teller line. They were low-income earners, but they never scrimped on the staple of coffee. There was always a canister of coffee and an electric drip coffee maker sitting on the Formica countertop in our kitchen (and in their separate residences after they divorced).…

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I guess I hadn’t been paying too close attention. One day everything was normal, the next it seemed as if Woody had aged 30 years. His eyes were as bright as ever, but most of his hair had turned grey overnight. His walk was much slower and his taste for any type of food had all but disappeared. Then one night I noticed he completely ignored his favorite meal of steak and baked potato, preferring to just veg out on the couch. It was obvious that things were far from being right. He had stopped communicating in his normal fashion and all of his movements had a slow, almost exaggerated, motion. He didn’t moan or complain, just slept a lot and didn’t move too much. I had seen these signs too many times to ignore them.…

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Most everything gleamed because gleam means clean and hospitals are supposed to be clean. I’d finished with the tests but my doctor wouldn’t let me leave. That’s a bad sign and he knew it but he couldn’t reel it back, so in some sort of med-school compensation he offered a nicer room. I jumped on the deal but the room, as hospital rooms go, was a bit bigger but not any nicer, so I went for a walk. He allowed it, but only after saying not too far. And the bad signs just kept coming.

I left to look for the cafeteria, not because I was hungry, just curious if it gleamed like everything else. In the hallway white scrubs jostled toward me and I asked for directions.…

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