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Adolescence
Jewish Community Center Entrance, July 1971
It’s dark and I don’t feel / at all well and my mother / will soon arrive to take me / home and the overripe aroma / of the hedges with the tiny / white flowers is making me / want to throw up but I’m / not alone because a fellow / counselor-in-training, / my first friend who is a boy, / has left the camp sleepover / to wait with me
October 2021
Sent Away
Kenneth R. Rosen On The Troubled-Teen Industry
Some of these children do need help, but is this the right type of help? Over the years counselors have been charged with sexual abuse, physical abuse, and predatory behavior.
July 2021
Ghost Dogs
What happened next I shoveled into that dark ditch of my psyche, and then I covered it with heavy stones, and it wasn’t until more than twelve years had passed that I remembered what I’d made myself forget.
June 2021
The Union Waltz
After work we would be headed to Smitty’s Bar, where the twangy music would kick up, and I’d try to find the courage to dance in public.
February 2021
Sitting On My Mother
The scar in the turf in front of her headstone has long since healed. Her death date was blank at her funeral, reflecting our disbelief. It now reads, Sept. 11, 2010. Beside that is another blank for my father.
September 2020
Blooming
You can hardly remember now how you would pull out the ribbons she weaved through your hair, launching them into the wind as you pedaled faster on your bike. You have left that girl behind. You believe in the power of ribbons and roses now. You are a woman.
September 2020
White Folks
I was working in the yard, raking out the sunny patch where I plant tomatoes and cucumbers, and feeling the pot gummy I’d eaten a half hour ago start to come on, announced by an uneasy self-consciousness and a brightening little buzz.
September 2020
