Author’s Note: “This poem grows out of my fascination with Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, a couple of unparalleled greatness. Franklin, a paraplegic ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “We live in a migratory center for several of nature’s long-distance flyers, most famously the monarch butterfly, the subject of an earlier poem of mine. In 2016, I read a newspaper article about the Godwit, a bird that travels almost non-stop to South America after hatching in Canada’s Hudson Bay and visiting our shores for food and rest. No one knows how it does this. As a retired brain surgeon, poet and forty-year Chesapeake sailor, I was naturally drawn to the Godwit as a poetic subject.”... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This short fiction explores that tension between what we think or know we should do and what we’re capable or willing to do. Inspired by people, places, and stories from my childhood, the piece focuses on a teenager trying to remain optimistic despite the resignation or limitation of the people surrounding him. One afternoon without planning it, he rejects the status quo, and a new world begins to open to him."...[Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The occasion for this poem was attending a friend’s 50th birthday party and seeing his younger brother for the first time in 30-plus years. That small shockwave of recognition and surprise at his aging sent me heading down this poetic rabbit hole, where I found myself wanting to hold the moment briefly, then accelerate time at warp speed — as a reminder (mostly to myself) of this precious continuum that links us all.” ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “New to Delaware, I took my 18-month-old on day trips to the sleepy beaches along Delaware Bay, where we first encountered horseshoe crabs. My life then was dominated by firsts: first ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The Beautiful Impossible”—speculative and oddly detailed—imagines the speaker before he was born, a figure who inhabits Nebraska and falls in love with a woman who ultimately turns away from him. At its core, the poem plays with questions we all ask at times: What would’ve happened had I done this instead of that? Would I be happier were I another? [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “When a significant relationship ends painfully, we often find ourselves rehashing the turning points, the decisions, the regrets. With the repetition of “when, then, that,” I hope to ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This poem came to me when I was traveled to a conference in Asheville, North Carolina. I grew up in Tennessee, and when I took a walk in those southeastern woods, I was flooded with ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: For the last few years I have had the honor of working with children in special education. It has been a humbling and educational experience. Every time I think I understand, I realize how little I know. Christopher, the protagonist of this nonfiction story who has now graduated high school, is one such student who taught me much more than I expected...[Continue Story]
Author’s note: Let’s not pretend all long-term relationships are a place lust dies, where neither party finds another person attractive ever again. Fantasy allows for a moment of escape in what is otherwise a committed coupling, and this poem explores how romantic fantasies are born and the ways in which they exert influence in real life... [Continue Story]
