Archive for the 2021 Literary Anthology Category

“Literature offers us feelings for which we do not have to pay. It allows us to love, condemn, condone, hope, dread, and hate without any of the risks those feelings ordinarily involve.” So writes Janet Burroway in her classic textbook—and though we don’t have to pay in

There you are on the set, real dad of the girl whose movie dad, the script says, is newly widowed and in town only for Christmas until he runs into his high school flame. He’s taller than you, younger,   Instagram famous, hair so perfect even the

Somedays the border is a slash of lipstick on a mirror: a hard red stop line leaving my looking glass half emptied. Somedays the border is a finger-string, soft-twine reminder of what might yet be. The familiar fold on the map has become a locked door. The

They told me I was meant for a life in the shade, a seat by the clearest window, and that you would just hang me up to leave me high and dry.   They said I was too young, far too green for love, and that you would

Is it mother to mother to mother or daughter to daughter to daughter? Each quaint peasant brightly painted and bulbous, expectant for generations down to the smallest nugget offered up by the sacrifice of those hollowed out halves. No belly to pry open with predictable delight, she

I wake up at 5:05 a.m. to pick my poodle’s eyes open. Lift her off the couch to pee outside. It is twelve degrees and she eats the snow. It must feel good in her old throat. I stand without socks at the sliding door guiding her

Dedicated to my father who captured some of these words from Love Lies Bleeding Don Delillo, 2005 in his diary years before he died from early onset Alzheimer’s in November 2019 When the sky has lost more buttons and basil scents the summer air, we will remember

I always prayed I’d dream of Little Women, the book that bore me through childhood. Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy— I’d be the fifth sister, the desperate one who flirted and drank champagne. Just once, they did come to me in a dream: but they traipsed about

Walking to the bus station, I have a guitar case in my hand. I could be an aging rocker afraid to leave the road, on his way to another small city gig. In fact I’m carrying my daughter’s guitar. I may be a frequent flier, but she’s

There’s no problem With asking for what you want The vitalities of life Is what I need right now To make me whole Love, peace, and joy I want them, let me get it I want this here love I want that old-school kind of love 90s