Connection
Wild Cat Cleo will not be ignored. She presses her case for freedom– her nature, not my nurture. There, the door is open. Go before I change my mind! Go out if you must do whatever cats do sniff and scratch, stalk and prowl slip silently into the dark black on black, camouflaged. Do what you must do but come back to me don’t quarrel with the neighbor’s menacing tom, eat bad meat, or run in front of moving vans. I must care for you, Cat Cleo, as your once mistress, my daughter, did bury my face in your fur, her hair. Leave the senses of the...
Read More1984
The day the new online catalogs arrived in the library marked the beginning of the end of Mrs. Lilah Lamb’s 25-year-library career. Or perhaps it was the day Mr. Chesterton, the new director, stepped into the library a year and some months earlier, in January 1984, a year for technological bodings. Mr. Chesterton was leading the Irving Public Library into the electronic age with the library board’s blessing. He even tried to make the transition to automation as painless as possible. To let patrons and staff get used to electronic browsing gradually,...
Read MoreLearning to Dance
Approaching the intersection of Main and Second Avenue, Elizabeth eyed the elegant dancing couple framed in neon which no longer lit. She’d always thought the sign had faded, aged like the interior of the Merlin Dance Studio itself. But now, poised above a slightly sagging, black canopy in the mid-afternoon drizzle, the dancers seemed vivid and animated. Eyeing them between swipes of the windshield wipers, Elizabeth imagined the man in black tux and the woman in flowing red gown moving to their own rhythm. The dashing couple vanished from sight, replaced by a mental image of Art...
Read More