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…
View writingHold 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…
View writingHow 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…
View writing[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…
View writing[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…
View writingTake 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…
View writingI 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…
View writingNordsee was angry that day. It was August but her waters were not calm. They flashed steel grey. Mutti, Agatha, Ernst, Frau Bleich, Sarah and Hans stared at the horizon. Barely perceptible, they saw the British ships, lined up, straight…
View writingFrom my mother, I learned to enjoy a good story. I remember my mother sitting next to me, cozy on the couch, a picture book on her lap. She read the words, I turned the pages. How I loved the…
View writing…….as if there were any actually ordinary people, for one man’s trash is another's treasure; And what may seem ordinary to one person may seem quite extraordinary to another. And so it was with George and me. He and I…
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