New World Writing Quarterly

The first day of Playwriting 320, I open the door to the class­room and nod hel­lo to four­teen stu­dents with expec­tant faces, weird garb, new tat­toos. Earlier today, I con­sid­ered ask­ing my TA to pass out my syl­labi, make intro­duc­tions, assign home­work.  I con­sid­ered not leav­ing my sister’s hos­pi­tal room where any day or week now she will sure­ly die. But a pro­fes­sor her­self, she insist­ed that every­thing flows from a first class.  “Go. You need to be there,” she said. “Get the fuck out of my room and give them grief,” then she coughed a laugh I couldn’t echo.  When the meds again pulled her under, I made sure the nurse had my cell, then I head­ed to cam­pus three miles away, the mobile of glass birds for her birth­day next week chirp­ing in the back seat.  I’m think­ing of giv­ing it to her lat­er today.

Ann smelled the ele­phant before she saw it. Then a mud-grey foot swung past and just ahead, land­ing to her left. The drover passed, and the tail of the ele­phant whisked out in front of her, stink­ing of loose bow­els. Ann stopped beside the fruit –more

Excerpt from The Odyssey and Dr. Novak

There are in our exis­tence spots of time,
Which with dis­tinct pre­em­i­nence retain
A ren­o­vat­ing Virtue …
(Wordsworth The Prelude)

ENGLAND 1946–1953

This is where the odyssey begins, or where I imag­ine it com­mences. The time is a warm English sum­mer after­noon in 1946. The place is the front gar­den of the Unitarian par­son­age sit­u­at­ed in a mod­est town bare­ly six miles north of Manchester. Holding my six-year-old hand is Dr. Novak, the head of the Unitarian move­ment in Czechoslovakia. 

Kepler made a deci­sion. He looked up from the side­walk and stepped direct­ly on a crack. He was twen­ty-three years old and it was time to grow up. It felt good, a load off, until he got a call from the emer­gency room say­ing his moth­er had stepped on a slug on the back porch, fall­en and bro­ken her back. A banana slug, fat and yel­low and flat­tened to the con­sis­ten­cy of dis­card­ed gum. He won­dered if it was poisonous—wasn’t that what bright col­ors sig­ni­fied in the wild? Danger, tox­i­c­i­ty, fangs and stingers? Inside the house his moth­er was laid out on the couch, her glow­ing, flow­ered muumuu sig­ni­fy­ing some­thing else, though he didn’t know what.

I spent sec­onds shar­ing the stage with him in my minor role, hours in the dark­ened wings watch­ing him per­form in the light. He came from Switzerland. He spoke at least three lan­guages. He was a world­ly col­lege senior. I remem­ber his curly hair, his long body, his lop­ing stride, but not his name.

Dear Cousin ,
I miss you very much. My life now has pur­pose, but your absence con­tin­ues to be so very hard to accept. I know things are just like the song says “you’ve got go to prison for your cousin / you’ve got to / you’ve got to / you’ve got to” but this truth does not delete my beat­ing heart for you. 

from a nov­el in progress

The Harris Suites crum­bled slow­ly on the back strip of Virginia Beach. Alex paused and looked up at the bleached yel­low paint of the façade. In each room, save one, the win­dow blinds were drawn. Even in the bright sun of mid­day he could sense the dark­ness inside those rooms. 

My Anger Tours the State Capitol

There were once a girl and a boy who lay on a hill of grav­el kiss­ing until their lips were raw. Kissing was the best thing that had ever hap­pened to the boy and the girl, and so they rode their bicy­cles to the grav­el pit every Sunday in pur­suit of that sweet, sin­gu­lar pastime.

The Dahlberg Repercussions

 
The woman on the sub­way looked like my moth­er so I sat down next to her and said you look like my mother. 

Two Poems

Home is Where the Heart Is

 
Mary Beth

Strictly speak­ing, as a licensed prac­ti­cal nurse (LPN), it is not my job to man­age the table décor, but I do it because I’m good at it.  Each res­i­dent gets a rose they are wel­come to pass on to their valen­tine-du-jour.   Though that’s kind of a sick joke, when you think about it.

Four Poems

You have never known love until your introduction to structuralism. You have never laughed as loudly as you laugh at Freud. You study for your literary theory class like you chew delicious morsels of food. You read about Hegel’s dialectic and Marxist ideology. Your migraines return from remission and you start having to give yourself triptan injections, missing classes. You write a cultural criticism paper using Jakobson’s paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. You study postcolonialism. You begin having seizures. Your psychiatrist tells you they are psychosomatic. He asks you what you’re studying that could be causing existential dread. He gives you a seizure preventative that is also a mood stabilizer and triples as a migraine preventative. The thrill of studying becomes a little less intense; the blackness of your depression becomes a little less dark. Your neurologist approves, and adds a beta-blocker to lower your blood pressure and prevent headaches. You get dizzy when you rise from sitting. You don’t have a primary care physician, only specialists. The doctor at the campus clinic prescribes you opiates for your migraine pain. Foucault’s archeological method leaps from the pages in bright neons; you see certain words in certain colors.

Your boyfriend’s sis­ter is study­ing psy­chol­o­gy. She says any­one in the room who doesn’t yawn when some­one else yawns is a sociopath, so you fake your yawns when you notice oth­ers yawn­ing. You sneak into the bed­room while she’s over and swal­low –more

What It Said

 
I texted my moth­er the night before that I’d be at the house not too late and not too ear­ly. Cut from the dark sky bled a pas­tel pink that seeped up and over the moun­tain around 6am, which was bet­ter than before we set the clocks back.

Burning Mountains

There was a space sta­tion on the news that sum­mer and some men­tion of the moons of Jupiter and the aster­oid belt. 

Two Pieces

 
The Space Between: A Meditation

My brain works in spurts: There are two hemi­spheres and a space between. The space between is filled with synaps­es, junc­tions that jump from nerve impulse to an unknown land­ing space. The space between is the vul­ner­a­ble sweet spot of juicy pos­si­bil­i­ty. The space between is a chasm, and beau­ti­ful, but how we land is entire­ly up to us.

My Father, The Fish, and The Rocking Chairs

 
No one had time to send greet­ing cards to William, my father, flow­ers meant for men, maybe an assort­ment of suc­cu­lents in a ceram­ic dish for his cof­fee table. In his room, the plas­tic pitch­er of hos­pi­tal water sits beside an emp­ty Styrofoam cup. A paper-wrapped straw lies aban­doned on the swing-around tray to hold orange Jell‑O snack packs, nev­er served.

Six Pieces 

LYDIA

He pushed the flow­ers into the folds of my apron. Keep walk­ing, he said. Keep walk­ing. So I walked. Then he said, You will lose all your ros­es walk­ing like that, dear girl.

Skating at Mill Pond

 
Sometimes we don’t want to know, frequency
so low we can’t arrive.  Gratitude is
a stone in the pock­et to remind you
to smile, and also a rock that drags you
down into the black of the glacial pond
to –more