Eliot King, a senior high school athlete, is stuck picking up the pieces his sister left behind after her arrest and execution. In the year 2052, the New American Government (N.A.G) has forbidden practicing Dark Artists by penalty of rehabilitation, or in most cases, death. Two years after his sister’s death, Eliot discovers three illegal Artifacts, actual Writer’s notebooks, hidden in his sister’s old desk. “Nobody”, the mysterious Writer speaking through these pages, poses the question–who is the real author of this hidden work?
Meditation’s Coda
The window’s tree is a friend. Its limbs pulse with rain as Sabbath meditation sifts preoccupation.
The living room corner, home within home, contents me. The sill’s cup of French Roast stimulates my molding words as poem and essay phrases on what seem urgent social concerns.
Some People Say the Holocaust Never Happened
An exhibit about the life of Anne Frank has been traveling the world for decades.1 Anne Frank was a Jewish girl in hiding from the Nazis in The Netherlands during the Holocaust, the systematic destruction of the Jewish people of Europe during WWII. The diary she kept while in hiding from 1942 to 1944 is an exemplar testimonial of the Jewish experience of persecution.
Outside, Snow Fell
The city sat like a Mughal emperor waiting for his palanquin. That’s how Mather described it later.
Outside, snow fell among the tall buildings, covering the street without regard for the cabs and delivery trucks crawling through the slush, creating disappearing black ribbons among the advancing white. The temperature dropped. The slush froze. The traffic followed.
Crimson Embers
Years pass and the path of one’s life can look as simple and straight as a draftsman’s ruler. A sudden movement and the pencil is jarred away leaving a dark streak across the paper. Even if one tries to erase the mark, there will always be a faint memory of the event.
Mr. Lincoln’s Money
I reckon I’d been in line a full hour when I got close enough to see the recruiting officer, and damn if it wasn’t the same lieutenant as in Elizabethtown three days ago. It surprised me that one recruiter would cover so large a territory. Of course, I didn’t really know how recruitment was done, and since Washington had only recently issued quotas to the states, probably no one else did either.
Semiprecious Memories
In the five years Jason and I have been together, never once has he said, “I love you.” Still, I know that he does love me even if he won’t say it in those words. It’s just not how he grew up, and he’d rather lovingly stroke my hair as I’m falling asleep, he’d rather surprise me with my favorite iced coffee…
Her Prime Conjecture1
‘Lasagne. It’s already in the oven, Mom,’ Cissy said. ‘And then I have a lot of papers to mark tonight.’ One and a half lies in that answer, but they were only white lies.
‘Don’t eat too much of it, honey,’ her mother said. ‘I know how rich your lasagne is. You can freeze the rest.’
‘Yes, Mom.’
‘Your father had a good week. The Chess Team reached the Third Round.’
Priestess, Traitor, Enemy, Saint
Comrade Juana understood Comrade Bárbara’s belief that Sister Rosemarie McKillop, the diminutive nun from Perth, Australia, posed a great threat to the success of the Shining Path. Like many priests and nuns, like many human rights organizations, like the democratic left, Sister Rosemarie offered the destitute masses of Perú an alternative to the armed struggle. She preached that the marginalized campesinos could achieve justice through peaceful methods and even distributed food to the poor from “imperialist” charitable organizations like Caritas. Such conduct had to be quashed, for such groups were inimical to the revolution.
A Widow’s Mind
Lorrie Blue has been widowed for five years. She is bathed in sadness—a trigger to a relentless, dark hole, a vacuum of emptiness that won’t, can’t leave her. She is freshly arrived in Austin, Texas, where she will deliver a paper on a panel on the work of an obscure Russian poet, an émigré who writes in English, not Russian. She’s hoping simply being here in this city where she met her husband twenty-five years ago in the mid-seventies will somehow diminish the emptiness, fill the vacuum.
Run to Finish
Frederick Douglass High School was a few blocks from Fairmount Park’s Strawberry Mansion, the estate that gave the area its quaint sounding name. The neighborhood had once been home to legendary jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, artist Henry O. Tanner, and Three Stooges alum Larry Fine. There was a time when fans could view Athletics and Phillies baseball games from the rooftops of row houses that ran adjacent to Shibe Park or Connie Mack stadium.
The Vanishing Point
Evan Reverie removes his Guiding Light™ earbud. It slips through his fingers and hits the cement floor with a crack. His stomach plummets. Despite having had it for a few years now, he still has a long way to go before it’s paid off.
He reaches down in the dark, his fingertips searching the cold cement until he feels the smooth, plastic-coated lithium bubble up from the floor. He caresses it, inspecting its surface, finds it intact and sighs in relief.
“Muscat of Alexandria,” “La Porte d’Enfer,” “Omar Khyamm’s Restaurant in the Sequoia Hotel”
On Temperance Avenue,
Southeast of the city of Fowler,
Is a ten-acre vineyard
Planted to Muscat of Alexandria vines,
In the true sense of the old world.
Near the railroad tracks and old highway,
Raisin packing, and packaging plants,
And their chain-link fences.
Hundreds of solitary vines
Over one-hundred years old…
“4 + 18 = 5,” “Posse Comitatus,” “The Rape and the Lock”
Gerald awakens to a shrill alarm
Gouging out his eardrums at 4:30 each morning
Rousing from a delicate slumber
He slinks into the bathroom to prepare his wan body for the day.
Rose arrives from work at 7:30 a.m. as she does six days every week
Like an invisible shroud of gossamer her soulless fragility moves…
“First Morning in Town,” “Lake House,” and “Trail That Has No Name”
In the morning,
I edge my Saturn past
the horse carriage.
I hear the hoofs clack
over the sound
of my engine.
“Mural of the Aztec Market of Tlatelolco by Diego Rivera,” “Walking by Charles Henry Alston,” and “Untitled (New York Cityscape) by Charles Henry Alston.”
I’ve always loved a crowded market, busy with comings and goings. In Peru, I craned my neck at the crowds of people, laughing and exchanging goods. I was zooming by in a van, but how I wished I could stop, buy an elote with large kernels to eat, and meander the stalls.
Love and Patience on Mount Pico
“Are you sure this is a road?” Samantha asked as the black basalt paving gave way to dark, red dirt, and the deep-green grass seemed to grow closer and closer to our rental car.
“It’s supposed to be the fastest way,” I answered. “According to Google Maps…”
Then I realized I’d lost the cell signal and my iPhone was navigating blind.
“Creative Storm Watch,” “Tornado Warning,” and “The Cultivar”
My hands crackle with electricity
And when it happens
my wrists start humming
Somewhere between
my eyes and nose tingles
And the neurons
direct that
sensation
(Anticipation before
lightning strikes)
Dancing with Lightning: Chapter 22
After Dave had ghosted Big Al’s throughout the five-day Seattle trip, Tino’s heavily garnished cover story of food poisoning from a frisée and radish salad with hazelnut dressing at his grandmother’s funeral was ignored, and he was promptly fired Monday morning.
Aegolius Creek
Everything begins and ends in fire. That’s what Mrs. Green told me when I was eleven in her youth Bible study at the Aegolius Creek Community Church. God created the heavens and the earth from a great ball of flame. Which doesn’t seem much different than the Big Bang Theory, though Mrs. Green said it was blasphemous to suggest something other than God was responsible for creation.
Blue Park Lane
Maybe everyone is just being nice because it’s my birthday, but I didn’t think it’d be possible for us to get to this point again.
“Goodnight. Don’t forget to unplug the lights,” my dad says, closing the gate of the fence.
“Okay, I just want to lie here for a minute,” I say, flopping back on the couch.
“I Am Not My Father’s Dream,” “Song Dust,” and “Ricardo from his Adobe Says”
counting smoke plumes
on the mesa horizon
while yucca spire buds
remain un-blossomed.
Between rocks guarding
the front door, a sunflower
stalk bends. I welt too.
Yellow flames wake the air.
“Weather Whiplash,” “Thoughts and Prayers,” and “Sharp Edges”
Two trees came down across the neighbor’s lawn last night
with the rain, kissing the gutters along the roof, knocking over
patio chairs, but everyone inside, just safe. We are uphill
from the flooding, where the beachfront parade of restaurants
were washed away
“Simon Baker’s Heart Attack”
Having played aces at the poker table in one dark
Corner of the bar and been accused, drank
Sloe gin fizz then kissed the girls (the music was just great;
The women naked danced demurely on tabletops slimy at Jake’s Bar-n-Grill
Whose neon sign announced “This Place Will Make Your Ladder Climb”)