It begins in the garden, where the late afternoon sun casts long golden stripes across the grass. A crooked tree stands nearby, its twisted limbs reaching outward like old hands, a quiet witness to decades of seasons passing. Beneath its shade, an old man kneels with a kind of reverent patience, his hands steady despite their age. A wide-brimmed hat rests atop his head, soft with years of wear. Across from him, a little girl, maybe seven, adjusts a cardboard crown that keeps slipping down her forehead. She clutches a paper towel roll like a sword, her bare feet dusty from the earth.
They are playing make-believe.
“I’m the explorer,” she announces proudly. “And you’re the Genie of the Forest.” He smiles. “A genie, am I?…
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I woke up to silence, which should’ve been my first clue something was off. No mom banging on my door with her patented, “Max, it’s 7:15, why aren’t you vertical?” No dad fumbling with the coffee maker downstairs. Just the stupid birds outside my window, chirping like they didn’t get the memo that the world had basically ended and restarted with all the characters in the wrong positions.
7:43, my phone said. Whatever. Not like time had any meaning during the zombie apocalypse of online school we’d been living through.
7:43.
Wait.
School. Real school. Today. With actual humans and fluorescent lights and—
“Mom?” I yelled, rolling my bulk off the bed. COVID had not been kind to my waistline. A year and a half of stress-eating Hot Cheetos while watching teachers freeze on Zoom had left me with what Dad called my “pandemic padding.”…
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A bloodied pedestrian.
An old man with a walker.
My grandfather’s dim hallway.
Walking out of the liquor store, a friend.
A friend smoking a joint.
New Year’s, 2015.
Drunk on his bed, a friend.
My father on a log.
My father hiking towards the sun.
A dog with a broken cow skull.
A small babbling brook.
A bum playing a flute.
My sister lighting a cigarette in the yard.
My brother with a full beard.
My brother posing in the rain.
A dog in front of the old market.
An old man smiling on a skateboard.
The taco truck down the street.
Photos in a box
— Memories in my heart.
– Brent Bramer…
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when I was ten Mom would send
Mike and me to the corner laundromat
with a basket of cold wet sheets
she’d slip a few extra coins in our coat pockets
for a bottle of ice cold Coke we’d share
waiting for the loads to dry
when the timer chimed we’d
pull out the steaming hot sheets
fold crisp white corners together
our smooth chins almost touching
something I still remember with a smile
so different from the last time
I saw Mike in a hospital bed
oxygen mask tight over his nose
a white wrinkled hospital sheet
tucked under his unshaven chin
– Frank Modica
Author’s Note: The simple act of folding sheets can bring back a variety of memories, some good and others painful.…
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Back in grad school for psychology, my peers and I were drawn to self-improvement and self-actualization techniques. Transactional analysis, neuro-linguistic programming, psychodrama… Even the names of these trendy methods sounded like a panacea for overcoming fears on the way to happiness and success. Students and post-grads flocked to these seminars, anticipating magical personal transformations. Attendees left enlightened, with new hopes and perspectives in search of the elusive better self.
The most popular classes were run by the Three Ss—Sanders, Sullivan, and Stevenson—the psychology department’s stars. Everyone clamored for their workshops. Getting in required almost superhuman persistence and signing up months in advance. I must admit, for my personal growth, most of those workshops were as helpful as mustard plasters for a corpse. I stayed stubbornly myself—phobias, complexes, and all.…
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First time we clocked “The Pinkster” was in Footscray, Melbourne, in maybe 2002. Helluva place back then… very Demi Monde. It had accreted layers of immigration on top of old school lower working Joe. Post war Greeks and Italians. After Vietnam it basically mostly became little Saigon. The more recently Ethiopians and Somalians and Eritreans. A real stew, but predominantly Pho Bo.
These days fucking gentrification encroaches. Hipsters, microbreweries and trendy burger joints. Skag dealers and street pros in the wind. Was a time when i couldn’t walk the street without someone threatening to sell me heroin. Don’t know what’s changed more, me or the street.
Any way, me and the Frenchman were just turning a corner when this dude waltzed past. Waltz ain’t the word.…
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The doctor put the disc
into the side of the computer
so the old man could see
the MRI of his old brain.
She gently, almost lyrically
pointed to its dark spaces,
so he could see how time
shrinks all life, even the brain.
But the old man smiled,
and said to the young doctor
[who was but half his age],
‘It’s a funny thing, Doc,
how only in old age have
I become a poet, and
a published one at that!
My brain is lessening,
shrinking, while my mind
is ever growing–
reaching into spaces
both small and vast,
ever seeking,
ever wondering,
ever rhapsodizing
the world….’
– Nolo Segundo
Author’s Note: Getting old is stranger than anyone realizes, until you are the one getting old.…
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