Integrative Ancestors, redux
When my daughter Sela was three, she invented a story about Bob Marley and Frederick Douglass. I put her allegory in the “Afterthoughts” of…
Dreamers Reading Room
What is a Plot of a Story?
Plot as a literary term is defined as the structure of events that make up the movements of a story through time; characters and settings are…
Target Practice
My mother saw the raccoon first. She was chopping veggies in front of an open window, hoping for a breeze because it was August, and already hot and sticky…
Shanghai Dumplings
I sat alone at the Shanghai Dumpling King on 34th Avenue in the same seat she always sat in. I came on a Thursday afternoon the way she always did…
Moshe
I am six years old and I go to Yeshiva and my name is Moshe. In summer there is an old woman who lives in the radiator in the living room of my apartment.
We grew up on fear and became heroes…
Fifty feet of nylon line and a milk jug stretched across the bay. Twenty hooks, mostly trebles, hung waiting; chicken liver and dough balls luring them in.
A Drop Like Wet Shellac
To your villa they come– the sketchbooks, the cameras, parade past your clay mugs and plates, black lace mantillas that covered your legs, white wooden bed…
Recipe for Saying Goodbye
Prepare for cooking by crawling in bed with ill mother to hear the secrets of making her special cornbread. Talk about all the times you have shared her cornbread…
Book Review: How to Change Your Mind
Michael Pollan’s latest book is: How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and…