Author’s Note: “‘In the Distance’ speaks to the idea that we might travel in order to get distance from something, perhaps a past in need of healing, but that the story will follow close behind. The unnamed “unrelenting story” in the poem might pursue us full circle, even circumnavigate the globe. But on a hopeful note, the expansive nature of travel does allow one to experience the world differently and perhaps see things with new eyes, toward a different end.”... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “When a childhood friend told me about his devastating work injury, my mind flashed back to a time when we were sure we were immortal and invulnerable. I wrote this piece as a tribute to our friendship in those younger years, and out of a desire to understand what drove our acts of daring.” ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “The Wizard of Oz was probably one of the first movies I ever watched, and I loved the Wicked Witch. Often, villains are my favorite part of narratives, and she terrified me—her laugh, ... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “This poem explores the ways we attempt to justify our privileges to ourselves. While I wrote it thinking primarily of my own white middle class American culture, it asks questions more ... [Continue Story]
Author’s note: “I once had a friend who did yoga and wrote down her dreams and earnestly informed me that she could hitchhike alone and be safe because she was special. She seemed to truly believe that nothing could hurt her. In “Her Gestures, Her Rules,” I imagined that she had a daughter who would, like most daughters, go from acolyte to critic to something in between.”
Her Gestures, Her Rules
BY THE EARLY ’80s, when the new age was still new, my mother, a local legend, operated the most popular yoga studio in Ulster County. Valley Yin Yang catered to aging hippies, rich and poor. I, conceived in 1969 at an ashram in Goa, was a significant line in her biography: an illegitimate half-Indian daughter. Her students were fascinated by me, as they were by every aspect of my mother’s life—her clothes, her diet, her true beliefs, her original religion. And, of course, her long legs and her thick hair, so dark my hair could have come from her, not from a never-named Indian father... [Continue Story]
Author’s Note: “Welcome Day is about a parent’s angst of how a combination of flawed genetics and a murky past will impact her child. The central character, Maria, is a single parent trying to distance her young son from her history of involvement in Irish paramilitary activity. In the story Maria watches her son begin life in a new school and worries how the ‘nature versus nurture’ dynamic will impact his development.”
Welcome Day
YOU’D SWEAR THERE’S A PIPE BOMB INSIDE, the way Maria holds the envelope at arm’s length. “The strain of fear’s gotten into ya,” Jimmy would say if he could see her now, panicked about opening a letter. This is the same Maria who’d hardly break stride when planting loaded packages near the Belfast barracks, years ago. Back then, she could create thick barriers in her mind, making it easy to categorize the soldiers as a faceless enemy from across the water rather than young lads barely out of school, homesick and frightened in strange borderlands. These days, Maria’s barriers are low and permeable, allowing fear to seep through whenever it wants. Today, it has come through her letterbox.
Sure enough, this envelope contains what she dreaded…(story continued in Spy)
Author’s Note: “The poem began with a prompt—to show the beauty of something ugly. Having lived in the DMV all my life, and recently read a history of the Chesapeake Bay, I thought of the oyster. It is not attractive, but it is vital to the bay and, of course, delicious to eat. The poem imagines life from the oyster’s point of view.” ...[Continue Story]
Author’s note: “After I saw images of the small Hebrew dictionary William Bradford created in his notebook, I was drawn to imagine his later life. And though the parallels may not seem obvious, I ... [Continue Story]
Author’s note: “As a narrative poet, the process of creating this piece was somewhat of a departure for me. Lately, I have been intrigued by absence—what is not visible, not said, not done—even my own mental absence from much of what is going on around me. This appeal to ‘white space’ is especially strong on the page. It allows readers to fill in the blanks, interpret, create their own meaning"... [Continue Story]
Author’s note: “Each day, a young woman runs past my home. What drives her pace, pushes her on? She runs fifteen miles a day alone, on country roads. I tried stepping into her shoes, tried to understand, imagined a past that could not be faced, a hurt that could not be undone. The repeated pounding of soles on pavement became a meditation, a saving grace"... [Continue Story]
