My parents gave me a horrible name and I decided I had to get them back for it. They were old hippies; well I guess not that old but when I was twelve they seemed pretty ancient – probably like thirty-five or maybe even forty. To get revenge I got one of my pals to go in with me and we set out to make ourselves a dope shack; a hang-out where we did everything that was wrong and pretended that it turned out right.
In the beginning the days had no names. Jerry chased soap bubbles in the sunshine over freshly-cut grass, while his father strummed the guitar. Life was an easy rhythm of wonders with no conceivable end.
“Wake up, Jerry! Time for school!” his mother called one Monday morning, the same day Friday found a special place in his heart.
Well this was Easter week, which means some things to some and other things to others. My only thought is, I wish I could comprehend what type of reasoning allows kids to gorge themselves with chocolate. I don’t understand the relevance. Same with rabbits! Glad to see that some pet stores are not selling the poor wee beasties at this time of year to stop idiot kids getting them as presents from their idiot parents. Anyway, I can only hope that you enjoyed your holidays in whatever way you wanted!
Did you ever wonder what it would be like to be a newt? To reside peaceably in an aquarium, rising every so often for a gulp of air, catching a worm in your thin amphibious mouth and being generally content? I often think about that. This is about a time when I thought about it a lot. It was the summer when I worked as a student intern at a senior center near Brighton Beach. I was pursuing a social work degree at Hunter College, and sharing an apartment in downtown Brooklyn with two other graduate students. It was a lonely time for me, and I kept several spotted newts in a terrarium for company, and a five disc CD player that I had on continuously when I was home to ward off the isolating silence.
Aleppo, Syria (AP) — Prior to joining the Tawheed Brigade in opposition to the Syrian government, Anwar Addat was a computer technician who never gave much thought to politics or religion. That was before a barrel bomb delivered by a government helicopter ignited a fire that killed his wife and two children. These days he goes nowhere without his AK-47 and body armor, and looks every bit the insurgent warrior he has reluctantly become.
The train arrived on time. In all the years that I’ve had to take trains, I don’t think a damned one of them were less than a half hour late. I take this to be a good omen as I board, maneuvering my luggage through the tightly packed crowd. Winter always makes people odd and this one was particularly cold. After pushing and pulling and dodging my way past families, brooding young men and confused old women, I find my seat. A window seat, another good sign. As the train begins crawling away from the platform, I notice that the seat beside me is still empty. This trip is getting better and better, I think to myself just as a large man ambles down the walkway, turning his craggy misshapen head left and right and looking for a place to land himself. Then he sees me. “Well, hello there, fella. Looks like we’ll be riding this one together. Name’s Jim. Yours?” he mumbles out in some indistinguishable southern accent. A twang cultivated by gut-rot moonshine and the searing warmth of ignorance.
That morning, a May Saturday, when Fernando “Fred” Norstrand first put on the police uniform, solid blue deep as a line of defense, bright buttons shining gold-like running down the front straight as ideas cemented in his mind, his wife stood in the bathroom doorway in open admiration of the new spectacle. He had only recently taken off a Navy uniform, discharged from service because of injury. They loved each other that morning with a new and silent abandon, their baby son still asleep, the day already lopsided in their favor, and the man of the house about to start a new job. He had been appointed as a special policeman of the town, assigned to the lone local theater to keep the kids in line, Saturday being the toughest start of all; popcorn, noise, kids away from parental control, let loose from their homes, very different from the few homes he’d visited during Pacific duty and the home he had grown up in.
Ellie awakens from a bad dream. While the gentle pre-dawn shadows fill her bedroom and strive toward a sense of pastel, she attempts to examine the details of her nightmare, but has only partial success. The only thing Ellie can recall for certain is being lost inside a terrible fog composed of tedious sounds and loneliness; a fog in which just being had been the worst thing possible.
I was fishing off the bridge over the Ipswich River, a few hundred yards from the Topsfield Fairgrounds. This was a day nothing was supposed to happen, but you know what they say about that stuff… it usually does, like Mike Murphy’s Law or Charlie Poulin’s Law or whatever they call it. Yet enough had occurred already in the last twenty-four hours and the odds were in my favor, or so they said.
Continue reading “Decisions on the Ipswich River by Tom Sheehan”
He sits at Anna’s bedside, unnoticed, working a crossword puzzle. Sometimes reading. Sometimes just waiting. Watching. Counting breaths until it’s time for him to do his job. Anna knows He’s here. She’s been expecting him.
Even though she cannot speak, I can hear her words to him, “I’ve been waiting for you,” Anna says. Her eyes are closed but she sees him. “Why are you taking so long? I’ve been ready for a while now.”
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