Last Bender

I wrote this poem in response to an interview I heard on NPR with a Granta editor. He had edited an issue with new, young novelists whom he characterized as bold and free of the irony and restrictions of older writers, who seemed to him afraid of expressing themselves. I agree with that. But then [...]

Florida is prosecuting Kaitlyn Hunt, a high school senior, for having a consensual sexual relationship with a 14 year old girl. I just signed a petition asking the prosecutor to drop the charges. Please, if you read this, sign the petition: here. Sexual hypocrisy is disgusting. Kaitlyn faces 15 years in prison for loving another person. [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Our activities did not go unnoticed. We were driving back up after sacking a small village not 10 miles from Santa Barbara when our flanks started to buzz. I looked out my window in the side view mirror and there were bikes on our tail and on either side. The mirror shattered and [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN That night Irmela came to me. Everyone was asleep. The coals of the fire were covered in white ash. I was staring at the sky and smelling the air. It was keeping me awake. Sleeping out always does. I didn’t know she was there until she climbed naked into my sleeping bag, or [...]

OF BOOKS AND CEPHALOPODS Octopi are not the only eight-armed creatures out there. There are books! This weekend was the spring book sale in Ithaca. I don’t usually go to the spring sale because it is smaller than the one in October, but Saturday morning at 4:55 my eyes popped open. It was a warm [...]

This picture, of my mother (right) and her friend Dorie May, taken probably in 1946, is where I started out from in the kitchen. True it was taken 14 years before I was born, but it shows the sarcasm and contempt my mother had for cooking and homemaking in general. In 1946 she was 23 [...]

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX “We’re not taking her!” Junior said, sipping coffee from a demitasse. There was a muffled whistling outside of the window and a few thousand wizz rounds exploded in the air, leaving tracer marks in the sky. Froomp. Sshhhhwoof. The windows shook and light flashed in our eyes. “We aren’t going to a long [...]

Our friend Eloisa Stapledutton from NY was up this weekend. Normally visitors from Imperium get a big dinner but we had a prescheduled benefit bean dinner to attend for daughter Zed, who is raising money for a school trip to Panama. I had grim forebodings about the bean dinner but they were misplaced: it was [...]

J. Robert Lennon has a great piece on why young writers should not immerse themselves in contemporary literary fiction. He wrote it in response to a piece by Dan Chaon. I have a minor quibble with his comments about poetry. I’ve noticed poets and novelists gaze at each other’s pastures and see green valleys on [...]

DORIE MAY AND MARGE READING, 1946                             CLICK ON THE IMAGE. DORIE MAY IS ON THE LEFT, MY MOTHER ON THE RIGHT.