I will try to put this in perspective in the coming weeks. Heading down to Ocean Road Beach just after sunrise, standing at the water’s edge, looking toward the horizon for signs of calm and peace, I’ll interpret an overhead blue heron as postive harbinger, a far-off tanker as portent of stability.—from . . .
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At the university where I worked part-time the most it would cost $700 per month for just my health insurance, much more for my family. This university owned like a quarter of the city. Maybe you could get your BA in landlording. Trump is one of their best-known alums. In those years . . .
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Garnet like the edges of Bible pages—no, not that dark, think brighter, more sacred, less symbol of hatred, moreof the revered called to repair this land’s flag bothered ragged by those cured with the devil’s mark—from “Hydra,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.Not . . .
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Author Photo by Andrea D’Agosto In the whale’s spout, a rainbow.In my daughter’s hair, a rainbow hairtie.In the holy, holy. Holy, holy.In a diamond’s carbon-shape angles.In each eye, a stone reflected,a sore.—from “In Morning,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.When I was . . .
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When I was small likea selfish ideaI would pick pieces of his hairoff my smooth girl-bodyswollenin the dark placeswhere he had become light—from “Triptych,” Volume 63, Issue 3 (Fall 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.After a long hiatus from writing after high school, I took it up . . .
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For years, Sue and I would collapse into hystericsif one of us said “Stuttgart.” We didn’t have to say“Mercedes factory” or “bedroom” or “Mom.”Just “Stuttgart” was enough to set us off,—from “Stuttgart Revisited,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.If I skip over . . .
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I try and go back to the bottomof the placid blue lake, or maybethe storm’s calm eye. This is how I bargainfor your love in my mind, like a child.—from “Chiaroscuro after Caravaggio’s Paul,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022) Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.In 5th grade . . .
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Fifty-nine hours before dying, Hermann Ploucquet greets the postman in the doorway. There is a letter from his mother and another from his friend, the physicist Hippolyte Fizeau, but none from Her Majesty, Queen Victoria. No doubt he pretended not to be disappointed, and I can imagine him chatting with the postman . . .
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Photo by Rick Bern “We came to think of it as our painting: two figuresEmbracing in a corrugated field, its patina of sunlightAnd stroked grasses beside the soot-stacks of factories,Their stern faces flat as prisons. Plumes of smokeUnravelling the shirt of sky.”—from “Factories at Clichy,” Volume 63, Issue 2 (Summer 2022) Tell . . .
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“When Natasha began having sex with Jimmy Walczyk, I became an ocean swimmer. With goggles and a towel I’d walk to Will Rogers Beach and, jumping in at Lifeguard Stand 18, swim a mile north to the rock jetty below the Palisades cliffs—which was danger. I wanted connectivity to that danger; I . . .
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