A bloodied pedestrian.
An old man with a walker.
My grandfather’s dim hallway.
Walking out of the liquor store, a friend.
A friend smoking a joint.
New Year’s, 2015.
Drunk on his bed, a friend.
My father on a log.
My father hiking towards the sun.
A dog with a broken cow skull.
A small babbling brook.
A bum playing a flute.
My sister lighting a cigarette in the yard.
My brother with a full beard.
My brother posing in the rain.
A dog in front of the old market.
An old man smiling on a skateboard.
The taco truck down the street.
Photos in a box
— Memories in my heart.
– Brent Bramer…
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when I was ten Mom would send
Mike and me to the corner laundromat
with a basket of cold wet sheets
she’d slip a few extra coins in our coat pockets
for a bottle of ice cold Coke we’d share
waiting for the loads to dry
when the timer chimed we’d
pull out the steaming hot sheets
fold crisp white corners together
our smooth chins almost touching
something I still remember with a smile
so different from the last time
I saw Mike in a hospital bed
oxygen mask tight over his nose
a white wrinkled hospital sheet
tucked under his unshaven chin
– Frank Modica
Author’s Note: The simple act of folding sheets can bring back a variety of memories, some good and others painful.…
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Back in grad school for psychology, my peers and I were drawn to self-improvement and self-actualization techniques. Transactional analysis, neuro-linguistic programming, psychodrama… Even the names of these trendy methods sounded like a panacea for overcoming fears on the way to happiness and success. Students and post-grads flocked to these seminars, anticipating magical personal transformations. Attendees left enlightened, with new hopes and perspectives in search of the elusive better self.
The most popular classes were run by the Three Ss—Sanders, Sullivan, and Stevenson—the psychology department’s stars. Everyone clamored for their workshops. Getting in required almost superhuman persistence and signing up months in advance. I must admit, for my personal growth, most of those workshops were as helpful as mustard plasters for a corpse. I stayed stubbornly myself—phobias, complexes, and all.…
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First time we clocked “The Pinkster” was in Footscray, Melbourne, in maybe 2002. Helluva place back then… very Demi Monde. It had accreted layers of immigration on top of old school lower working Joe. Post war Greeks and Italians. After Vietnam it basically mostly became little Saigon. The more recently Ethiopians and Somalians and Eritreans. A real stew, but predominantly Pho Bo.
These days fucking gentrification encroaches. Hipsters, microbreweries and trendy burger joints. Skag dealers and street pros in the wind. Was a time when i couldn’t walk the street without someone threatening to sell me heroin. Don’t know what’s changed more, me or the street.
Any way, me and the Frenchman were just turning a corner when this dude waltzed past. Waltz ain’t the word.…
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The doctor put the disc
into the side of the computer
so the old man could see
the MRI of his old brain.
She gently, almost lyrically
pointed to its dark spaces,
so he could see how time
shrinks all life, even the brain.
But the old man smiled,
and said to the young doctor
[who was but half his age],
‘It’s a funny thing, Doc,
how only in old age have
I become a poet, and
a published one at that!
My brain is lessening,
shrinking, while my mind
is ever growing–
reaching into spaces
both small and vast,
ever seeking,
ever wondering,
ever rhapsodizing
the world….’
– Nolo Segundo
Author’s Note: Getting old is stranger than anyone realizes, until you are the one getting old.…
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I fear I have become
a lip gloss girlie—
it was an impulse purchase,
that clear tube
of goo
with the cute packaging,
something totally outside
my nature
of torn jeans
and bare faces,
the Eau de tomboy
wafting from my neck,
yet the swipe
of a little doe-foot applicator
brings out my femininity—
my features,
now soft and serene
where they were once
sharp and rugged,
I thought it not possible
to claw away
my masculinity,
and find underneath
a womanly complexion,
but I fear
I have become
a girl again,
giddy and free
glossy to the touch.
– Theo Sterling…
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The last time I went to California, I drove past the house where I grew up. It had only been a few months since my mom had left, moving two dogs, an ornery cat and twenty-seven years’ worth of stuff into a two-room cottage with thirty-days’ notice, but the property already looked, not just neglected—but trashed. There were no curtains in the windows and a few of the window panes had been pulled clear off. The cabinet where we had stored our spices, flour, tea—it seemed like everything—was on its side in the front yard. My mom’s garden, cultivated in fits and starts over decades, was a tangle of weeds crawling up the fence my father had built from spare wood to keep our dogs in and the horses out.…
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