Mama’s Boy
The day I found out my mother had cancer I knew it before they even spoke. There was something — I still can’t name it — something to the silence after the ringing stopped. My father’s “Hey Bud” lacked the usual enthusiasm. For twenty minutes there was only medical jargon, recitation of statistics. And in the pauses in between I could feel her, as only a mother could, worrying only how I’d take the news. When we were done, she told me she loved me, I replied in kind, and that I knew it would be okay. It’s always been like...
Read MoreThat Month My Mother Begged to Wait with Her in the Dark
under the blood red dogwood, berries crinkly as skin. My mother whose bed I’d curl into the whole year I was six, woke up dreaming of fire, doesn’t want to be alone. Between the car and the house, shorter than the hallway to her blue room where Otter Creek Falls licked the window. She holds onto the doll, the Lindberg doll I smashed in a tantrum. My mother who’d take subways at night all thru Brooklyn is afraid in the drive way of Apple Tree. Don’t leave me she cries like a child begging for water she’ll never...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of March 18 (Early Spring)
The last gasps of winter weather strike the Northern Hemisphere, as more and more, we see hints of growing warmth. This week’s contributors look at Spring. “Spring Came Early This Year” by Michael H. Brownstein proffers the first glimpses of spring. “Raw” by Jenica Lodde depicts twin distractions of spring and motherhood. “Dusk at Preston Montford” by Brian Cronwell gives us a snapshot of spring in Shropshire,...
Read MoreDusk at Preston Montford
Shropshire, England, 1983 First, the silence. Then, the green of poplars in a row like a solemn waiting chorus, motionless. The wood-and-wire fences, brick wall: borders marking edges. A silent Severn, wet line seen through boughs. At first. Then, the leaves at the top of poplars, waving in a slight breeze. Fresh cow dung, dried dung, green grass, dry weeds. Purple and white flowers. A wildness uncontained by fences. Down the path, shadows of dusk lead on to the River. The Severn moves in a gentle way: an angler’s plunk, the call of a pigeon, ripples of far-off cars, ferns...
Read MoreRaw
It’s like someone took an eraser to my executive function. I forgot to make myself coffee this morning. Coffee! Can you imagine? The one thing in my life that turns my insides to juice, slipped my mind. And the librarian had to dismiss me from the desk after she checked out my books. “It’s ok. You’re all good. You can go now.” Because I was waiting for something else to happen. Just staring and waiting. Driving home the trees with their thin branches pierce me. The fat robins jumping—I feel the weight of them. I have to clean out the mouse cage before my daughter’s birthday...
Read MoreSpring Came Early This Year
Spring came early this year, the robins arrived in February and the great mulberry tree began to develop its harvest before spring thought itself able. We wondered why so many nests and so many birds found themselves in the branches, but it did not matter— there were enough for all of us even after the week long rain, the cold spit, the great frost, mulberries everywhere, enough food for a season a season too...
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