No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
Jack finished the draft, said so long to Michael and left. Instead of going back to Long Island City, he walked south on Franklin Street. From there he went to Kent Ave into Williamsburg where he was glad to see the sidewalks were busier. A typical Friday night was underway. Near typical, he corrected himself. People continued to live life even after a crash the likes of which hadn’t been seen in a hundred years.
The church walls shining in arches, growing vines, peacocks, and vases.
Flip a card of power at Ravenna— that a battery comes alive—flip a card
The four of us stood under the automatic porch light. Kandy cradled Elena while I held a sleeping Daniel. "I expect the bad witch to come out at any moment," said Kandy, as I pressed the doorbell. I looked at the inn’s outer wall of dark overlapping half round shingles and had to agree.
When the door finally opened it was not a witch, but an old, old man who gazed out at us. Yet somehow he brought the freshness of a mountain lake with him. His right cheek bulged as though he constantly chewed tobacco. He wore a green tweed suit coat, red vest, white shirt and dark trousers. It was eleven pm in the summer, twenty-three degrees and we were all in shorts and tee-shirts.
I keep my hands to myself. It makes things easier. I pull my elbows in tight, cross my arms over my body, and take up as little space as I can. Everything I need, I carry with my own limbs, and I don’t have to worry about overstepping bounds if I never step outside of my own personal bubble.
“Charlie Suskind is a prideful man who hates losing,” George said. “He’s only lost this tournament once. He fired one of the guys who beat him and made life a living hell for the other until he quit. Our jobs are on the line. Got it?”
Every September, my husband Dan watches the US Open. Broadcast live from Flushing Meadows, Queens, where I have roots, it takes place on the former grounds of the 1964-65 New York World's Fair. I've never latched onto tennis, but I'll often watch for a few minutes, waiting for the inevitable shot of the Unisphere so I can make my annual comment, “I saw that with my family at the World's Fair.”