Double-take
A computer is the last place to look for the Holocaust.
Adam & Eve Discuss Retirement
After Adam and Eve got expelled from the garden, there was no more low-hanging fruit to pick from the Tree. Anyhow, there was no need to pick because they’d already figured out that they weren’t going to live in a perfect world. In this imperfect world as soon as they touched a branch, berries no […]
Seven Things I Will Not Think About in the Last Seconds of My Life
“I am a master of hallucination.” –Arthur Rimbaud I will not think about my retirement account. I will rest inside a concession stand of white gauze, sun hot. I will ask for water loaded with chunks of ice as a pinball machine rises from Poseidon’s eyebrow. I swallow chrome balls like egg yolks slipped into […]
Afikomen in Sterlington, Louisiana
Daffodils sprouting in bright yellow bunches always have always signaled for me spring and Passover. Matzah plays a big role here, the unleavened bread symbolic of the Jewish exodus from enslavement in Egypt about 3,300 years ago. (“Hurry up, Sadie. We don’t have time for the bread to rise. Grab your hat and let’s go!”) […]
Was John’s Bargain Store a Model for WalMart?
The John’s Bargain Store I remember was located at the Soundview Avenue stop of the “IRT” line. Soundview Avenue was an “elevated” subway stop. Rather than climbing up the stairs from an underground station, I climbed downstairs from a platform through the turnstile leading outside to the street. The newsstand was at the corner with […]
American Dream Sequence
It was a humzinger of a dream, baby, I dreamed it for you, baby. Gypsy Rose Lee put away your feathers. Things get muddled with interlocking conglomerates high profit on the margin kind of dreams my mother wanted me to be a teacher not a stripper take the summer off with my husband and kids […]
Welcome to the Sterlington, Louisiana Dirt Track Races
Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined I’d be living in the rural south. When I say never, I really mean never. I’m a city girl whose horizon has always been shaped by buildings, never trees; secondly, I’m a Jewish girl, which means that large urban centers are the places where the majority […]
A Jew in Monroe, Louisiana
This is my first season in Louisiana. I came here in triple digit heat, sweat beading off my arms by just standing outside, an occupant of cold suburban caves and icy cars who was admonished not to roll down windows, driving back and forth along highway 165 transporting a young friend to and from the […]