I've been thinking a lot about how things change. Nothing lasts forever, and that is nothing new. But what this means is that my current state of bliss

“When it came right down to it, I wanted courage.” Marianne lowered her eyes to her coffee cup, embarrassed at the admission. Leslie noted the gesture. “’Wanted.’ You mean as in ‘desired?’ Why are you embarrassed to say that?” “I’m…

[Fiction Fragment] The darkness isn't the worst part. Today is the anniversary. Two years since the Days of Half Light. Two years of thick clouds swaddling the planet. Not the cotton ball fluffy kind that only live in pictures. These…

The war ended on June 28, 1919. The Treaty of Versailles was signed in France’s Palace of Versailles, a perpetually cold place where Champagne froze in glasses as French nobles toasted to their health. Article 231 of the Treaty read:…

Before the ancient Hebrews could even start to schlepp those mighty tons of stone to their final destination - those monuments to a Pharaoh's hubris -they first had to make the stuff out of which those pitiless chunks of rock…

Hold a poem as you would hold a precious gem, delicately, so that your mind behaves like a group of agile fingers, enfolding, holding steady, securing yet allowing to run free the captive prisoner within…..embrace a poem, as you would…

How do we metabolize loss? Are we talking about the loss of a person? of a limb? of a job? of a cell phone? a house key? a knit beanie? And who is the “we” here? We human beings? We…

[Fiction] The day her mother fell and broke her hip was the day the daughter's body stopped metabolizing everything. Everything is such a vague word, but need one explain? Imagine. Cupcakes, french fries, Quarter Pounders with Cheese. Healthy ingredients, like…

[Fiction] Take a poem hold it to the light Don't let it burn too bright When it crackles and burns Lay it gently in its urn She was so not a poet. Because poetry these days hardly ever rhymed and…

Take a poem and hold it to the light. She sent it to me, old school tucked in a flowered card some years ago. She probably went to the printing store, just to photocopy this poem, walking of course, and…

I searched for the poem that I remembered, oddly, vaguely, from my first year of teaching at HTHS. It was Nancy Ellis, in my senior English class, who wanted to use that poem for her required essay analysis. That class…