Philadelphia Stories Winter 2017 by Philadelphia Stories

Cultivating a community of writers,

artists, and readers across the Delaware Valley

WINTER / 2017 / FREE

AN HOURGLASS FULL OF SNOWFLAKES A.E. MILFORD / ON THE DIVINE LORRAINE AND FALLING IN LOVE SHANNON LORRAINE FROST GREENSTEIN WHEN THE LEAF BUG BITES I'LL BE LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW AT YOU SMOKING IN THE RAIN RACHEL HOWE

NEW AND RECENT TITLES FROM PS BOOKS, THE BOOKS DIVISION OF PHILADELPHIA STORIES

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CONTENTS

Publisher/Editorial Director Carla Spataro Publisher/Executive Director Christine Weiser Fiction Editor Mitchell Sommers Assistant Fiction Editor Amy Luginbuhl

FEATURES

Nonfiction Editor Julia MacDonnell Chang

AN HOURG"SS FULL OF SNOWF"KES (fiction) .................................................................A.E. MILFORD

WHEN THE LEAF BUG BITES I'LL BE LOOKING OUT THE WINDOW AT YOU SMOKING IN THE RAIN (fiction) ...............................................................RACHEL HOWE

ON THE DIVINE LORRAINE AND FALLING IN LOVE (non fiction) .................................SHANNON LORRAINE FROST GREENSTEIN

20 EVENT PHOTO SPREAD

22 ROBIN B"CK INTERVIEW .....................................................................................................................JULIA MACDONNELL 27 THE PEP TALK (column) ..................................................................................................................................AIMEE "BRIE

POETRY 7

WHEN THE CITY FELL FROM THE SKY .......................................................................................LISA ALEXANDER BARON

CANOPY ................................................................................................................................................................DAN ELMAN

14 *WHEN THE HARPSICHORD OF WATERCOLORS* .............................................................PAUL SIEGELL 26 SOUNDS .................................................................................................................................................................WILSON ROBERTS 28 WHY I BE WRITIN’ STUFF .........................................................................................................................JOSEPH EARL THOMAS

ART A Snow Day by Laura Rutherford Renner

Laura Rutherford Renner is an artist whose paintings on wood depict contemporary life in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Her work has been included in various juried exhibitions and shows,recently as a juried member of Artists Gallery in Lambertville, NJ, and at the iconic Philadelphia Sketch Club. In addition to her painting career, Laura is a practicing Occupational Therapist and the published author of several biographical articles for OT journals. She lives in Collingswood, NJ.

COVER

Five Pears by Betsy Wilson

Betsy Wilson is an avid amateur photographer who loves the challenge and artistry she experiences with every photographic capture. Betsy writes, "While visiting a friend in the Poconos, she had a basket full of pears recently handpicked from the tree in her backyard. I loved the colors and the shapes, and she gladly gave me some to photograph.” You can see more of Betsy's images at www.pixoto.com/betsy.wilson.1610

Blue Spruce by Mary Gilman

Thunder by Marge Feldman

Marge Feldman is a formally schooled professional artist with a BFA from Syracuse University and a Teaching Certificate from Towson University. She creates surrealscapes to describe the contradictions of our perplexing universe, using camera, computer and acrylic paint. She is now a member of ARTsisters,the Main Line Art Center and Philadelphia/ Tri-State Artists Equity. She teaches painting and drawing at the Pinecrest Community Center in Miami. margefeldmanart.com

Rainforest by Linnie Kerrigan-Greenberg

Linnie Kerrigan-Greenberg joined her first collage workshop in 2011. It opened up a wondrous world of sparkle, spin and creativity that brings her great joy. Mainly self-taught, she is still exploring and learning about art. Her love of children’s picture books greatly influences her choice of subject matter – colorful, imaginary landscapes and creatures.

Mary Gilman works in collage/mixed media and painting, and has exhibited in juried shows both regionally and nationally. She holds a BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art and is a member of a number of art associations. Mary also holds degrees in English and writing, and has written and edited for various publications, in addition to publishing her poetry. She lives and works in Chester County.

On Kreeger Pond by Stephanie Kirk

Stephanie Kirk is a conceptual photographic artist. Stephanie attended the International Center for Photography (ICP) in New York City. She has won national competitions and exhibited throughout the United States, including venues such as the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, Perkins Center for the Arts, The Print Center, Brooklyn Waterfront Artist Coalition, The Center for Fine Art Photography, The Delaware Museum of Art, The Photographic Center Northwest and ICP. www.skirkphotos.com

Along the Creek by Deborah Northey

Deborah Northey lives in Chester County, Pennsylvania. Watercolor and Oil are her choices of mediums. Chester County landscapes and scenes from her sailing travels have been her subjects. Deborah is Treasurer of Montgomery County Guild of Professional Artists (MCGOPA), and a member of several art associations including Artists Equity, Chester County Art Association, and Flying Colors Professional Artists Group. Her work has been in several juried shows and she has been an art donator to several non-profit organizations. www.DeborahNortheyArt.com

Poetry Editor Courtney Bambrick Contest Coordinator & Assistant Poetry Editor Nicole Mancuso Art Editor Pam McLean-Parker Art Director Derek Carnegie Executive Assistant Fabi Malacarne Editorial Assistants Lena Van Susette Brooks Marketing Assistant Dom Saunders Web Design Loic Duros Board of Directors Concha Alborg Mitchell Sommers Alison Hicks Alex Husted Will Woldenberg Fiction Board Addison Namnoum Aidan O'Brien Aimee LaBrie Alex Brubaker Alexandra Karpa Ally Evans Alyssa Persons Amanda Knight Surie Andrew Linton Brenda Adey Brian Ellis Brianna Garber Brittany Korn Carolina Ortiz Che Yeun Chelsea Covington Maass Cierra Miller Clare Haggerty Crystal Mills Daniel Huppman Daniel Pontius Darrah M. Hewlet

Elizabeth Green Erik F. Cwik Ilene Rush Jon Busch Kate Centofanti Kathleen Furin Kerry Young Kristin Moyer Lena Van Leslie McRobbie Melissa Foster Nathan Long Owen Hamill Robert Kerbeck Rosanna Duffy Sara Asikainen Tiara DeGuzman Tracey M. Romero Victoria Calhoun Vivienne Mah Walt Maguiure

NonFiction Board Sam Dodge Deb Off Andrea Vinci Sarah Wecht Rachel Mamola

Poetry Board

Water Bed by Stephanie Kirk

Philadelphia Stories, founded in 2004, is a non-profit literary magazine that publishes the finest literary fiction, poetry, and art from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware and distributes free of charge to a wide demographic throughout the region. The mission of Philadelphia Stories is to cultivate a community of writers, artists, and readers in the Greater Philadelphia Area. Philadelphia Stories is a 501c3. To support Philadelphia Stories and the local arts, please visit www.philadelphiastories.org to become a member today!

Peter Baroth Liz Chang Blythe Davenport Pat Green Vernita Hall Kathryn Ionata Donna Keegan Shira Moolten Aimee Penna Thomas Jay Rush Margot Douaihy Liz Rose Dolan

SUPPORT PROVIDED IN PART BY THE PHILADELPHIA CULTURAL FUND.

An Hourglass Full of Snowflakes A.E. Milford

counter. “Let’s just get outta here. You’ve got no customers. Let’s just go.” He leans against the counter and fiddles with a pack of cigarettes. She grabs his hand and puts the cigarettes back. “I can’t just leave. I’ve gotta finish my shift.” The girl pauses and leans back on the wall behind her. “It’s only another hour.” He’s enamored with how confident she is. She acts so natural around him. She doesn’t seem to have as many thoughts running through her head all the time. Like he does. They’re both 18 years old, but Peter feels as if she’s more mature. “We should go somewhere tonight, then. Like the city.” “In the snow? You’re crazy.” She takes out the rubber band, or tie, or whatever, in her hair, and lets it fall. Then she puts it back into another ponytail. “We should stay inside. Watch TV or something. You can come to my house.” Peter loves going to her house. Everything about it seems exotic. Her baby pictures on the wall. The cat always sleeping on the couch. “OK, your house it is. We should spend as much time together as we can before you move.” “Don’t make me sad.” The girl pouts, jokingly pushing out her bottom lip. But her eyes betray her. There’s seriousness in her casual tone. “Oh, come on, you shouldn’t think like that. We’ve got, like, two months.” Peter grabs the cigarettes again and flips them high into the air. Snow falls on Main Street once more. But Charter Shores feels different. Peter Bloom is 54 years old now. When he took the exit for Charter Shores off the Turnpike, he’d tried to remember how long it had been since he’d driven down Main Street. Years. He rarely even drove through South Jersey anymore, and he certainly wouldn’t have been in the area if Harold hadn’t moved offices at the last minute. Whatever the reason, when Peter saw his headlights illuminating the green exit sign through the snow, he’d taken the off ramp. The dark pines, the lack of moonlight on the marshland, something about it had made him think of his youth. Made him drive down the causeway to the bridge. The snowstorm held no romance for him now, at least not in the present. There was a glimmer in his past, though. One simple, frozen sliver of a moment in a gas station 36 years ago. It was the only moment Peter could pinpoint where he had peace of mind. Calmness. On that particular evening, in the near

It’s rare for a man to have true peace of mind. Or maybe that’s too negative. Maybe a man has peace of mind the majority of his life, but only notices it once it’s gone, when turmoil is magnified, during times of stress when one looks back enviously on calmer waters. These were the thoughts running through Peter Bloom’s mind as he drove through a flashing red light down the snowy Main Street of Charter Shores. There’s not much to say about Charter Shores. The town was founded in 1892, according to the wooden sign that greets summer visitors as they cross the bridge to the island – that is, if you could even call it an island. Charter Shores is a glorified sand bar off the coast of New Jersey. Lots of people visit in the summer. No one visits in the winter. That’s why as the snow fell on Main Street, Peter Bloom wasn’t concerned about stopping at that flashing red light. He wasn’t worried about kids running across the street. All the shops were closed. No one was walking back from the beach. The welcome mat of the five and dime, which usually offered a dusting of sand, was now covered in snow. As Peter passed by the five and dime, he thought about the sand versus the snow, and for some reason, pictured an hourglass filled with soft snowflakes. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? Peter pulls his car into the only open store within a mile, the gas station at the end of Main Street. The snowpack crunches beneath his feet as waves crash on shore a few hundred yards away. Peter is 18 years old. He’s in love. The snow, the ice, all is romantic. The air smells like saltwater mixed with gasoline. It’s perfume to his senses. Peter enters the store. A pile of hamburgers wrapped in foil sits under a heat-lamp. He’s got no appetite. Hasn’t for days. He read somewhere that when you’re in love you release chemicals or hormones that are like a drug. Pheromones or endorphins or something like that. They kill your appetite. Peter likes the feeling. He hopes it never goes away. From behind the counter, a young blonde girl offers him a smile. “Can I get you anything, sir?” “Why don’t you just run away with me?” “Excuse me, sir?” Her hair’s pulled back into a ponytail with a white rubber band. Or a hair tie. Peter doesn’t know what it’s called. But he loves it. He loves how the end of the ponytail touches her fair skin. The scent of her shampoo drifts across the

BLUE SPRUCE by MARY GILMAN

FIVE PEARS by BETSY WILSON

dead of night, it was the only moment of happiness he could remember. Is the glass half-full or half-empty? The wooden sign for Charter Shores has a fresh coat of paint. Main Street is lined with new stores. National chains. The five and dime, however, is still in business. Bittersweet memories of buying sand toys there as a child mix with memories of buying his own kids sand toys there two decades ago. Peter’s mind isn’t interested in those two dots in time, though. Right now he’s looking to pinpoint a spot somewhere in between. Peter pulls into the gas station at the end of Main Street. The convenience store’s facade looks different, with yellow stucco incongruously suggesting the Southwest. The neon logo of the current owner casts a glow on the snowy asphalt. Although the exterior is unfamiliar at first, Peter guesses the steel tanks deep beneath the ground are probably the same ones from his youth. The shop door shuts with a jingle, blocking out the noise of the ocean. A young brunette with stenciled eyebrows and big hoop earrings stands behind the counter. Her complexion is dark, olive, Mediterranean. Peter nervously browses the three short aisles of the store, occasionally glancing at the shoplifter mirror hanging in the corner. He makes eye contact with the girl’s reflection. Peter quickly picks up a bag of potato chips, absentmindedly reading the ingredients before placing it back on the shelf. Finally, grabbing a bag of pretzels, Peter approaches the register. “Two dollars, fifteen cents,” the girl says. Peter doesn’t answer. “Two dollars, fifteen cents.” At that moment, something inexplicable comes over him. A dark, hollow feeling. An emotion that’s been welling within him for days, that forces its way to the surface. He swallows dry air as the girl looks at him inquisitively. A strange old man, breathing a

bit too heavily. She speaks up again. “Is that all? Can I get you anything else?” He looks directly into her eyes. “Why don’t you just run away with me?” The brunette steps back. “What?” She’s not sure she heard him correctly. He doesn’t answer. “What’d you say?” Peter stumbles. A bit dizzy. His throat tightens. Almost instantly a man with a tattoo on his neck appears from the back room. “Hey, you all right, man?” Peter steadies himself on the counter. “You OK?” the girl asks. Peter struggles to answer, his eyes on the floor. He finally speaks. “I’m fine. I’m fine.” Peter almost loses his balance entirely, catching himself on the counter. The tattooed man steps around a display of candy bars to help. Peter pushes him away and rushes outside. The snow falls harder. Peter’s hands shake as he fumbles with his car keys. The door finally gives way and Peter throws himself into the driver’s seat. His ears ring with adrenaline. He knows what do to, once his hands stop shaking. He’ll call Harold and tell him to rip up the papers. He’ll go back to his wife, ask for forgiveness. Everything will be fine. In the distance, frigid waves crash on shore. The sound echoes off the gas station for a moment, then dies away between the falling snow. A.E. Milford was born and raised in Delaware, spending much of his youth at the Jersey Shore. Now based in Los Angeles, Milford co-wrote both the awardingwinning short film “Another Day, Another Dime” and the documentary film “Who Is Billy Bones?” -- which recently began airing nationwide on the cable network LinkTV. His fiction has been published in the Schuylkill Valley Journal. Milford is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and is married with one daughter.

When the City Fell From the Sky Poem by Lisa Alexander Baron

I was standing in the town square staring up at trees spiraling down on their bulky heads and landing with their roots thrust up like errant toes or fingers from a grave. I heard the houses bellow as they gave up, as their shoulders sagged and snagged star by star like the back of a black coat catching white lint bit by bit. When the city fell from the sky, I covered my ears as atonal notes from that final fugue stuttered like old blood from the ripped linen bandages of the clouds. And here, now -- even in the safety of the here-to-stay dark: the slow play and re-play of that black-and-white still, of that father's fist clenching and unclenching his son's hand before he let him go.

Lisa Alexander Baron's most recent book is While She Poses, a collection of poems prompted by visual art (Aldrich P, 2015). She is a writing and speech coach and teaches at LaSalle University in the business school.

When the Leaf Bug Bites I'll Be Looking out the Window at You Smoking in the Rain Rachel Howe

in a room so over-bleached all the white was yellowing. There was a game room with checkers and a pinball machine, a bar that actually played Frank Sinatra (no irony) and only Frank Sinatra the whole time we were there, and a swing set with a slide in the back. It was Labor Day weekend, we had driven up from Philly to the Poconos on a whim, and this was the only room available for miles around. Our original plan had been to stay home Saturday and Monday, but spend Sunday at the Jersey shore with friends. At the last minute, Luke had suggested the mountains instead. I really preferred the beach, but I didn’t say so. I was afraid it would lead to yet another fight and ruin the weekend. Our fights were usually about how I always had to get my own way. “I just have to get out of the city, Liz,” he’d said, and I had agreed, tired of looking at my grimy basement filled with mismatched toys and socks. But we both knew what we really meant was, “We have to get away from each other.” There were a million things left unsaid between us these days. We used to argue like all get-out. There were broken glasses, spilled cans of paint, even a vacuum cleaner down the stairs one time. I still didn’t have all the attachments. But we’d started to hold it together when the kids came. Luke was never a fan of direct expression; he preferred the silent treatment. And all my screaming just made me seem like the crazy one, so I started to pull it together, to hold it together, to hold it in. And when Luke reached out for me - when his father died, when he got layed off from the bank - I was too busy holding myself in to reach back. In the morning, Henry captured a leaf bug on the balcony and brought it inside where it pinched him. Surprised, he dropped it and it floundered, panicked, around the synthetic brown/orange carpeting. It was still drizzling and fuzzy outside, but the sun was peeking through the clouds and beginning to burn off the blur. Henry ran back to the balcony to show Luke the drop of blood jeweled on his finger, and Luke let him lean against his leg awhile, the smoke from his cigarette mixing with the rising mist.

On the hotel room balcony, Luke stood smoking cigarette after cigarette as I put the kids to bed. Their excitement at being in a hotel, at sharing a room with us, had them popping up like the moles in that arcade game where you hit ‘em with a mallet. I can’t deal with this, he told me as he closed the sliding glass door behind him. I watched him as he leaned against the railing, his hip pressing into the soft, splintering wood, his long torso leaning out into the crickety night, rain falling softly behind him, drops catching the light of the bare bulb every so often like falling stars against the black sky beyond. Esme fell asleep on my arm, which began to prick with pins and needles after a while. She always slept with her mouth open like a goldfish reaching for air. Every time I tried to move my arm, she stirred. Eventually I gave up and lay there, staring at the stained popcorn ceiling. In sleep as in life, Henry fidgeted, which was the reason I’d never let him sleep in bed with us at home. It always meant getting kicked in my belly or my back, and being half awake all night. Now he made little noises as he tugged the stiff floral bedspread on the opposite bed. Was he imagining himself a superhero? Or were his dreams as mundane and frustrating as my own, wrestling with toothpaste tubes that never released their goo or continuously sharpening pencils which would never write? I wrestled my arm free from Esme and went over to kiss Henry’s smooth forehead. He smelled of baby sweat, damp and sweet. I could smell my own body, too, as I leaned over, a deeper, pungent smell that comforted me in this strange environment. Luke, being what my parents call a real American– which is their way of saying an Annie Hall kind of WASP, is afraid of body odor. In fact, he is afraid of any odor. He generally strives for the neutral in his life - except in me. But maybe he strives to have it in me, too. The hotel called itself a resort. It had an indoor pool housed

THUNDER by MARGE FELDMAN

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Noooo!â&#x20AC;? yelled the kids from the beds. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Come on, Liz. Why do you always have to be such a hardass?â&#x20AC;? Now, the whine crept into my throat, clawed at it like a little troll that lived in my larynx and had made its way up to my vocal chords. It wanted out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We drove all the way up here. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go to the beach. I want to get out of this crappy place and see some goddamned waterfalls!â&#x20AC;? I turned to the kids, trying to win them over. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Who wants to see waterfalls with Mommy?â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;No!â&#x20AC;? They yelled in unison, the traitors. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Swimming!!!!â&#x20AC;? But they were joyous, tossing their heads back, their hair flying in the air as they descended back to the mattress from the air, the rough sheets pooling at their feet. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Daddy! Daddy!â&#x20AC;? yelled Esme, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Tell Mommy we want to go swimming!â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s right. Mommy doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t always have to get her way, right guys?â&#x20AC;? He looked at me as he said this. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Yeah, yeah! Mommy always gets her way,â&#x20AC;? Esme cried delightedly, punctuating each jump with a single word, but Henry, though he kept jumping, gave me a sad look, his eyes tender. I pinched my mouth into a smile for him, raising my eyebrows to show it was okay. He smiled back an unsure smile that broke my heart. I turned to look at Luke hard. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Later,â&#x20AC;? he announced. â&#x20AC;&#x153;As soon as we get back from seeing the goddamn waterfalls.â&#x20AC;? He looked right back at me. We struggled the kids into all manner of clothing and sandals and sunscreen. Packed a knapsack with water and granola bars and an extra pair of underwear for Esme, just in case. We were walking out the door, the kids rushing ahead, racing down the hallway when Luke said, â&#x20AC;&#x153;You know, Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m kind of tired. Maybe

We had taken the kids to the pool as soon as we got to the place the day before. They drank in the chlorine like sugar and had emerged only for dinner, eyes red as potheads, drowsy and cranky from their efforts. Now, they wanted to go back. Once they got in, I knew weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d never get them out. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It looks like itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clearing up,â&#x20AC;? I said. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Letâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hit that waterfall I was reading about last night. It should be really close by.â&#x20AC;? Esmeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knees started to buckle as she braced for her oncoming tantrum. â&#x20AC;&#x153;No Mommy, noooo!â&#x20AC;? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Come on, Liz,â&#x20AC;? said Luke in his timbred voice that meant he was going to win and he knew it. â&#x20AC;&#x153;They can go for a little while canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t they?â&#x20AC;? It was a cool sound, an unworried sound, such a contrast to my clenched one whenever we had a standoff, which lately was every day. He sounded like he was flicking a cigarette away and it turned my mind hot and red. The kids jumped on the beds, squealing. Luke was the good parent now, but I knew what would happen. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d spend the day inhaling chlorine as my hair frizzed while Luke watched TV in the room, smoked on the balcony, and made a quick appearance to dunk them in the pool just as I would be about to lose my mind refereeing yet another fight over whose turn it was to wear the goggles. Meanwhile, the world outside would become beautiful and sunny, a perfect day for a late summer hike, and Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have to watch it fade into pink from inside the peeling, steamy room. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to rain later,â&#x20AC;? I tried in a practical voice. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I think we should go now. You know how they get once they start anything. Anyway, we can hit the pool when we get back, before we leave.â&#x20AC;?

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RAINFOREST by LINNIE KERRIGAN-GREENBERG

“A mushy tushy!” Henry announced, and he laughed so hard that pulpated pretzel fell in a wad from his mouth, into his hand. He held it up with a big grin as we passed dark green trees, a Girl Scout camp, a boat launch, posters announcing state game land. This got Esme going, and the three of us couldn’t stop laughing. “Ewe!” I said finally, “Give that to me.” I held out my hand for the sticky bread and knew I was his mother in an intimate, physical way. I plopped it into the plastic bag with the rest of the wrappers and straws and sugar packets from the gas station. “Isn’t that funny, Daddy?” Henry demanded when he realized Luke was silent. But Luke was lost in his own world. “Daddy? Daddy!” There is no cover from children, and Luke was forced eventually to join us back in the car. “Daddy – a mushy tushy! Isn’t that funny?” “Hmmmmm….” Luke nodded, his eyes still focused two car lengths ahead. I shook his shoulder, and he gradually turned to me, his face changing rapidly. It reminded me of this doll Esme had; the head spins around to show different faces, each with a different emotion. His face settled into an expression with flared nostrils on his aquiline nose, his ears cocked, making the wiry gray hairs at his temple stick out, as if he’d smelled something bad. His eyes locked into mine, I sucked in my breath at the hate I felt radiating from him in that moment. “What?” he finally asked, his voice like metal. “Henry told a joke,” I managed, but I turned my eyes to the trees, the leaves, the trees, the leaves, the forest for the trees. I wanted to say something, say anything, but no words came to mind. I knew it was not his fault that our marriage was falling apart. It was my silence and my fear. I was trying to hold it together by not arguing back, to make each moment okay, but it was all rotten underneath, and I knew it. Luke sucked in a breath, and that seemed to flip a switch. He became Dad again. His shoulder straightened, a playful smile came to his lips, his eyebrows raised inquisitively. “Tell it again, son,” he prodded in a warm voice as he turned around slightly in his seat, his hands still on the wheel. “I wasn’t paying attention.” Son - what a WASP-y thing to say. I could hear my mother in my ear – Oy! Americans! Everything on the surface. As we trudged up the hill towards the stream, each of us with a child, and then switching children, we hardly had to talk to each other. I squeezed Esme’s fat little belly and her skinny bug legs wiggled around in glee and that was enough. The sun went in and out, changing the light dramatically as we made our way beneath the canopy of Eastern trees, blackberries still ripe on the vines just beyond the edges of the trail. The children ran up ahead as they began to hear the faint trickle of water. I smiled, and in my gentlest voice pointed out how lovely the mountains were, even as the summer was fading. Luke just made a guttural sound to indicate he’d heard me, but otherwise didn’t respond. When we passed a side trail, Luke announced, “I think I’m going to go off this way for a bit. I want to be by myself for a while.” “Really?” I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice. I stood sweating and stunned, gnats buzzing in my ear. I swatted them away. “What’s the problem, Liz?” Luke’s shoulders sank. He asked the question not, of course, because he wanted to hear what the problem was, but because this was the routine. I felt my throat clench and the voice that came out sounded

As we trudged up the hill towards the stream, each of us with a child, and then switching children, we hardly had to talk to each other. I squeezed Esme’s fat little belly and her skinny bug legs wiggled around in glee and that was enough. I’ll just stay back and rest. Then I can meet you down at the pool.” His hand went up to his hair, his nervous move. He knew he wasn’t going to get away with this one. “This is supposed to be a family weekend. I don’t want to tramp around the Poconos alone with two kids. God, sometimes I feel like I’m already a single mother.” “It was your idea to do this stupid hike,” he shot back. “It was your idea to come up here!” “Shhhh!!!” he scolded. We were standing in the orange carpeted hallway. It wasn’t even 8:30. I said it again in a whisper, the kind of yell whisper whose peaks are tinged with throaty anger. “It was your fucking idea to come up here! I would have been very happy to go hang out with the Shermans and eat crabs and swim in the ocean. At least I would have had another adult to talk to.” I turned away from him then and ran after the kids who were arguing over who could press the elevator’s down button. I didn’t even look behind to see if he followed. Luke and I met in college. He wore flannels and bobbed his head to Pearl Jam, pumping the keg and handing out red cups, rarely taking one himself By the time Nirvana would be wailing away in the background, and everyone else had either hooked up or had passed out on dirty couches, Luke would be ready to go take a really good look at the stars. He’d get a Mexican blanket. He’d take me by the hand. He’d say the names of the constellations: Pleadies, Cassiopea, Saggitarius. He’d point to them, he’d kiss me, the ground would be wet under the blanket and seep into the seat of my pants, go cold beneath my shoulder. I wouldn’t care, not even if there was a rock under my hip. He would kiss me, and I could see the stars. Despite being called the Nature’s Wonder Resort, there was no breakfast included or available, so we grabbed food from the gas station across the street. In the car, the kids munched on their stale soft pretzels, and I sipped hot, bitter coffee that burned my tongue in a not unpleasant way, the steam fogging up my glasses. Luke had followed, grudgingly. From his booster seat in back, Henry told a joke. “What does an elephant get when he sits on a marshmallow?” he asked, already giggling at the answer. “What?” I turned around in my seat, smiling.

ON KREEGER POND by STEPHANIE KIRK

song, whenever you wanted to hear it. “Neat!” I said, handing it back to him. He put on The Steve Miller band. He liked to point out all the jazz influences. “Listen to that bass line,” he would normally say. But this time, he surprised me. I was half listening, half wondering what we were going to make for dinner, when he said, “When this song is over, do you want to pick something?“ “To listen to?” I turned toward him. He smiled back at me, “Yeah, to listen to.” He said it gently, and I remembered him kissing me under the stars all those years ago. I took the phone back from him as Steve Miller finished wailing away. What did I want to hear? It had been the better part of a decade since my musical choices had ranged beyond “ohn Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” or the local alternative station as default aural wallpaper as I drove to my job as a social worker. Usually, I just listened to the news and numbed out. Now, with the gadget in my hand, I felt electrified. The hairs on my arms perked up. My fingertips tingled as I scrolled through my choices. I glanced at Luke, who was responsibly looking 10 seconds down the road. The sky was again dreary. The answers were nowhere around me. And then it floated to me: Julianna Hatfield – that’s who I wanted to hear: her blunt lyrics, her raw voice, the bare guitar behind her. That was how I had felt in college. The yearning, the anticipation, the new connections to people, ideas, art. I had been truly myself then, interested in the world and eager to join it. I was unapologetically angry: at my parents, at God, at men who called to me on the street, at the idiots in Washington. I used to picture myself on a kibbutz, in the deserts of Arizona, swimming in the rocky blue grottos of the Baja Peninsula. And then I’d met Luke, and for a while, we were alive together, talking through the night and making love on dirty bedspreads or a couch in the hallway, it didn’t matter. Once we stayed up an entire night together, each reading a novel – and they weren’t even novels for class. I read Trainspotting, flipping back and forth to the Scottish-American glossary. I don’t remember what Luke read, but it didn’t matter. We lay head to toe on my long, twin, dorm room bed, our legs wrapped around each other. In the morning, we skipped class and listened to The Pixies. Julianna crooned about about hating her sister through the speakers as the early evening sun fought its way through the clouds. I had forgotten how breathy she sounded, how like a grown baby. “God,” Luke looked over at me, smiling, “remember her?” “Yeah, I know. Remember all those baby trends – the little barrettes, the pacifiers?” “Oh my god, yeah,” He drew out the last word and looked off into the distance, but his hand found mine on the center console as the opening cords of the next song crashed and popped on our puny car speaker. “Sleater-Kinney,” Luke acknowledged the band. “You really liked these guys, didn’t you?” The kids were crashed out in back by now, and I checked briefly to make sure the heavy bass didn’t wake them. Esme drooled, openmouthed onto her car seat. Henry’s head hung down, his blond curls bobbing with the rhythm of the car and the occasional lift from the air conditioner. The singer’s staccato lyrics rang through their angriest song, “Monster,” the anthem of all the fights I’d once had with my mother. I listened for a minute, letting the pure thrill of her anger wash through me. “I was so angry with my mother then. With both my parents, I

high pitched. “You’re going to leave me alone? With the kids? Now? Again?” “You seriously can’t handle them for half an hour in the woods? Jesus, you’ll be fine. They’re not babies anymore. I’ve got a lot on my mind.” He turned to walk onto the green trail. You always do, I thought as I started to turn my back, to walk off without explaining. I was the demanding, control-freak wife who had no sympathy for a man who’d lost his job and was just getting back on his feet at a new one with a salary reduction. I knew I was being an overgrown brat, but something in those woods, something about being in that run-down motel that my husband and kids seemed to enjoy so much, something about being away from the piles of dishes and laundry and bills and dust bunnies and birthday parties and deadlines at work and phone calls that Luke was going to be late again and issues with the day care and the kindergarten and passive aggressive phone calls from his mother and wet beds at 3 in the morning and crayon all over our newly painted dining room walls and a back turned away from me in our giant, lonely bed made me face him and call him back to me. “Luke!” I shouted. “What?” His voice like a razor, he turned his face back to me, but his body still pointed up the adjoining hill, into the darkness where the trees swallowed the path. “It’s not about the kids.” I tried to keep that horrible, whiny sound out of my voice. I took a breath. “It’s about me.” I looked at my feet, at the mud drying back into dirt and a fuzzy red and brown caterpillar making its slow way to a leaf just beyond the toes of my worn out sneakers. My face felt hot and my fingers were prickly. I tried to take another breath, but my chest felt blocked. When I looked back up, Luke had turned fully back to me. “I don’t want you to go. I want you to be with me. To be with me. Here, together.” He looked wistfully up the trail, and I looked away. I said what I needed to say. I breathed in and out, sending oxygen to the places in my body that were gasping for it. I wiggled my fingers and turned to go toward the kids and the goddamn waterfall and the crowd of people surely photographing it and daring each other to dunk under it and eating hummus and peanut butter sandwiches on large flat rocks next to it. He was beside me suddenly, his long arm caged around my shoulder. He pulled me into him, and I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding as my narrow shoulders crushed into his ribs. He didn’t say anything and neither did I. We just walked in step down the trail. Driving back to Philly on the highway, we passed over the state park. “Look down there - I think that’s where we were hiking,” I announced. The kids sucked on candy and stared out their windows. Luke nodded. Satisfied with what I could get out of him for the moment, I looked at the cars parked below, the incredible green of the trees. The other trees, the ones lining the highway seemed dusty, lighter, tired, closer to being ready to shed their leaves for fall, to rest. “Take a look at this,” Luke said suddenly, handing me his iPhone. “I signed up for this thing; it’s a service. You pay 10 bucks a month and you can program in any album you want.” He touched the app and an array of choices popped up. You could look by artists or song or genre. I had a radio feature on my phone, but you could only choose one song on it – then you were stuck with whatever the invisible DJ in the device chose next. This, he explained, would allow you to choose whatever

ALONG THE CREEK by DEBORAH NORTHEY

guess, but mostly with my mother. I always felt like I could never be good enough for her. I don’t know. I guess everyone feels that way about their parents.” I thought a minute as the beat pulsed through my whole body. It felt so freeing, just as it had back then. “It’s funny, you know?” “What is?” he asked. And it felt so good to be asked. To feel that he was really listening. Lately, he always seemed to answer any of my deep thoughts with “Uh-huh,” before going off to make himself a sandwich. “Well, I think they still have all of these expectations of me, and they are disappointed in me for not becoming a lawyer and marrying a good Jewish doctor. They’d never say that, of course, but it’s there. It’s funny because it just doesn’t make me angry the way it used to. I guess they’ve softened. I guess I have, too.” Luke appeared to consider this. He’d always had such a mild relationship with his own parents. Not a very deep relationship, but a pleasant one. I wondered if he could understand. I squeezed his hand as the song ended. “When we get home,” he began as a new song started. I leaned in, wondering what he would propose for us. Maybe ordering a pizza and watching a Disney movie all together before bedtime. Maybe getting the kids to bed early so we could hang out together. “I gotta run into the office for a bit.”

I sat stunned, my hand still under his. I pulled it out and my chin jutted forward. I looked over, but all I saw was the long side of his face. His eyes were on the road. “What? Luke, it’s Sunday evening. And tomorrow is Labor Day. Can’t it at least wait until tomorrow? I thought we were having a family weekend.” “Calm down,” he answered, ducking my question. “It’s no big deal. You can handle one night of bedtime.” I hated when he told me to calm down. I felt the pulse of “Monster” in my blood again. “You know I have to get my numbers up. I’m the new guy there. I need to get back at least to where I was.” There was just no arguing with that. I wanted to pull him out into the middle of the pulsing crowd and get him to jump, jump, jump! But he wasn’t that guy anymore and the crowd had long since gone to law school and gotten 401K plans. I stared out the window at the high sun, which hung like a yellow egg in the sky. Luke kept looking at the road, barely in the car at all. Rachel Howe runs a tutoring program that brings Temple University students into North Philadelphia schools. She has taught writing at Rowan and Temple Universities as well as the Community College of Philadelphia. She also runs creative writing workshops for kids at local recreation centers and libraries. Her work has been published in Dark Matters, The Philadelphia City Paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a variety of radio programs. Ms. Howe holds an M.A. in Creative Writing from Temple University. She lives in South Philadelphia with her three children.

Canopy Poem by Dan Elman

1. greasepaint buffalo twirling dishes gravity creep children pull turtleneck wonder through the mad herd 2. the neighbor's dog is barking invisibly it's about to rain the trees are dropping their knots you remember yourself 3. kitchen sink full of cotton candy a lampshade sky the measured mind all the clown feet

Dan Elman's work has appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Apiary, Referential Magazine, and others. A resident of Philadelphia for fifteen years, he recently returned to his home town along the upper Delaware, where he now works as a furniture designer, antiques conservator, and liquidator.

*WHEN THE HARPSICHORD OF WATERCOLORS* Poem by Paul Siegell

I hung them out of the location, but was worried about rain. Awareness on canvas, Monday in the South Philly kill zone. I’ll be on your arm, but these are not the only words we have in common. As easy as it is to get a slice of pizza, the sooner you know that the pharmacy will wear you out, the better— “Morrissey” says my sweatshirt, says ceremonial moans, says that that written record of watercolors (what kept you in hiding all weekend) came kind closer to what you saw that helped morning her wet-towel warmth unsealed your sight from the glue of pinkeye: “paperclip rainclouds exploding toad-green sparks”—Still, as a concept apropos of the inside-out, saying things like “Can I make a delivery order?” seems to know no limitations. The slip from yesterday’s cookie asks, “How dark is dark? How wise is wise?” and no matter how many lucky numbers I get, I still can’t tip to an answer fair—Best check back for details as they develop.

Paul Siegell is the author of wild life rifle fire, jambandbootleg and Poemergency Room, and a senior editor at Painted Bride Quarterly. Kindly find more of his work - and concrete, poetry, and t-shirts - at “ReVeLeR @ eYeLeVeL" (paulsiegell.blogspot.com) and @paulsiegell.

On the Divine Lorraine and Falling in Love Shannon Lorraine Frost Greenstein

Some hidden corner of my subconscious remembers his concerns that we hadn’t been together long enough (about six weeks before I left for school, to be precise), that we’d break up if we moved in together too soon (we’ve been together for eleven years now, by the way), that the cats wouldn’t get along (they didn’t).

We lived in the ethereal shadow of the Divine Lorraine only for a year, but it stands out in my head, still as bright as the neon lights dancing underneath its towering signage. An abandoned, graffitied, majestic husk of a hotel, it dominated the skyline where we lived at 15th and Fairmount. In particular, I remember the way the setting sun illuminated it from behind, oranges and pinks seeming to emanate from the building like a halo. My future husband and I began to build our relationship under the spell of this iconic Philadelphian landmark. Then and now, the image of the Divine Lorraine is a sense memory calling to mind the magic that is a fledgling relationship.

I, however, was too caught up in the flurry of discarding my current life and driving fourteen hours straight to share those concerns. So with my cat and everything I owned, I moved in with my first real boyfriend. I decided upon entering his tiny apartment, a clichéd bachelor pad covered in animal fur, that I would just hope for ‘happily ever after.’ I dumped all of my metaphorical eggs (and the literal ones, too, I suppose, given that we now have a son) into the fragile basket of a relationship that had existed for less than two months. Blind optimism, it seems to me in retrospect.

We’d met at the end of June at the former Grape Street Pub in Manayunk. He was in the band. I was watching the band. During a break, he offered me an Altoid. I quoted Chuck Palahniuk. We were immediately infatuated with one another. But then, in early August, I had to leave for graduate school, a Ph.D. in my far future and my new boyfriend (hopefully not) in the past.

The truth is, we started living together before we knew each other. I was young enough that our seven-year age difference seemed insurmountable. He was cynical enough that he didn’t see the point of legal matrimony. We disagreed about a number of fundamental issues and ideas. We were taking an immeasurable risk.

He was in Philadelphia, playing bass for a rock band, writing solo pieces on the piano, and otherwise immersing himself in music. I was at the University of Illinois, an accelerated Ph.D. candidate in Continental Philosophy. Distance does not make the heart grow fonder. Homesick, miserable, and increasingly unmotivated as time went on, I missed viscerally what was waiting for me in Philadelphia: My boyfriend, his rescue Doberman named Max, an elderly cat, and a cocoon of unconditional love without the pressures of academia.

I’d arrived in the dead of winter. The Divine Lorraine greeted me, a beacon of beauty in what was then a less-than-charming neighborhood. My car was broken into within a week of my arrival. After dark, I couldn’t walk around outside without Max, his Doberman. It was an alien environment, and my naiveté was immediately apparent. The sight of the Divine Lorraine, steps away, offered me a sense of comfort and wonder in a sea of anonymous strangers and unfamiliar sights. It towered above the cacophony of street noise and angry voices, above the homeless men on the corners and the litter in the gutters. It was haunting, and lovely, and made me glad to be outside in its presence.

Despite wanting to succeed, unceasing loneliness wore away at my resolve to finish the degree. My physical and emotional health suffered. I burned out. I dropped out of the program, packed my car, and headed to Philly. I didn’t exactly show up unannounced on his doorstep with all my belongings and my cat; I gave him at least twenty-four hours notice that I’d be showing up on his doorstep with all my belongings and my cat.

My boyfriend and I joked about it, christening it the “Divine

“When would I ever possibly be in that situation?”

In the shadow of the Divine Lorraine, we began our life together. We’ve been through euphoric highs and rock-bottom lows. We’ve stressed about making ends meet. We’ve had health scares and stretches of unemployment, but we’ve somehow, miraculously, managed to stay as enamored with one another at the end of the day as we were in those early months.

“Just answer the question.” “I don’t know, probably ice cream.” And… “Wow, did you see that bat?!” “I know! I saw it!” Those nights around the melancholy old hotel marked the learning curve of our relationship. Through our walks and talks, we stumbled through painful baggage, but also discovered our shared sense of humor. Looking back, my sheer innocence shocks me. When I’d moved in, we were, essentially, strangers. In the shadow of the Divine Lorraine, we began our life together. We’ve been through euphoric highs and rock-bottom lows. As the Doberman sadly passed on less than a year after those urban midnight hikes, we’ve since acquired more cats, in addition to the baby. We’ve stressed about making ends meet. We’ve had health scares and stretches of unemployment, but we’ve somehow, miraculously, managed to stay as enamored with one another at the end of the day as we were in those early months.

Shannon Lorraine.” I suspect the name we share is a large part of my fascination with the structure. But the rest is due to my fondness for a dark, eerie, Tim Burton-esque beauty. It’s easy to imagine a time when the hotel must have stood proudly, windows like glass eyes watching over old-time Philadelphia. Back in late 2005 when I moved to the city, however, it was a glimmer of its former self. We started walking around at night together, passing by the Divine Lorraine on our way in and out, two insomniacs with a dog in tow. Part of it was the pull of the building, part of it was the thrill of the dark, and part of it was the sheer joy that comes from falling in love with someone for the very first time.

Even with all the memories of our nights together crowding my skull, I still remember, quite distinctly, my favorite one from very early on. It was a cold spell in February 2006. Me being perpetually freezing, I was cloaked in layers and a down coat, my hands shoved into his pocket, exhaling clouds of smoke as my breath met the frigid air. We were walking by the Divine Lorraine in a peculiar silence most unlike Philadelphia. We had the dog walking contentedly next to us and Wawa coffee and no iPhones to distract us while in the other’s presence.

We learned about one another slowly, taking longer and longer walks around the neighborhood. I came to realize, as I’m still coming to realize every day, the depth of his character and his capacity for kindness. I learned that he is empathetic to a fault, practically a musical savant, someone protective of those he loves and those in need. I heard about his effusive Jewish family, his band, his former cats. I learned who he truly is with the Divine Lorraine as our sentinel, standing guard.

It was very, very late, the kind of stillness that can only be experienced while the rest of the world is asleep. The moon was very nearly full, either waxing or waning; I tried to be mindful and present, to take a visual photograph of the moment, to remember how it felt to be loved on a beautiful night in (what I was slowly starting to view as) a beautiful city.

After all the months apart, a relationship birthed of phone calls and letter writing, it was surreal to be in one another’s presence, to have as much of the other as we could possibly want. The Doberman wasn’t even necessary as we started walking longer distances, to neighborhoods with trees and window boxes and silent statuesque houses. Our conversations were all over the spectrum, ranging from our hopes to our phobias, never following the same path twice. We talked about anything and everything, posing endless questions and thought experiments.

Against the silhouette of the derelict edifice, he looked at me, and I knew suddenly what was about to happen seconds before he spoke. He took a deep breath, and then validated my decision to uproot my life, forego my Ph.D., and take this huge gamble with three short words. “I love you.”

He would ask, “What’s your favorite movie?” I would say, “Probably A Clockwork Orange. What’s your favorite movie?”

Shannon Frost Greenstein resides in Philadelphia with her soul mate, their son, and several spoiled cats. She works for a non-profit organization in Center City while attempting to author the Next Great American Novel. Her interests include writing, theater, ballet, and philosophy, and she harbors an unhealthy obsession with Mt. Everest, the Hill Cumorah Pageant, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the summer Olympics. Shannon’s goals are to eventually pay her way out of debt with her writing, to raise a child who uses gender-neutral pronouns, and to acquire even more cats. Her work has been published in McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Philadelphia City Paper, WHYY’s Speak Easy, the Metropolis literary magazine, and the elephant journal.

And… “If you were on a deserted island and could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?”

Fall Event Highlights This past October, Philadelphia Stories celebrated its 10th anniversary of Push to Publish, our annual conference for emerging and established writers, and our 8th annual Marguerite McGlinn Fiction Prize, our annual short story contest that features a first place $2,000 cash award and invitation to an awards dinner on the campus of Rosemont College. Here are some highlights.

Writers gathered at the Rosemont Kistler Library to kick off a day of networking and learning at Push to Publish.

From Philadelphia Stories, Left to Right: Art Editor Pam Mclean-Parker; Co-Founders Carla Spataro and Christine Weiser; Executive Assistant Fabi Malacarne; and Poetry Editor Courtney Bambrick

Left to right: Mary Donaldson-Evans, Philadelphia Stories Board Member Concha Alborg, and author Eileen Cuniffe of the Arts & Business Council.

Left to right: 2016 Marguerite McGlinn winner Kate Blakinger with judge Robin Black

Speed date editors review work with authors.

Prize sponsor Tom McGlinn (center) enjoys the awards ceremony with friends.

Carla Spataro, PS Editorial Director and Director of Rosemont’s MFA program, moderates the “meet the agents” panel.

Robin Black Interview Julia MacDonnell

creative writing program, a loyal and supportive writing community. Nobody who knew Black then was surprised when, in 2008, in an event as rare as the sighting of a white peacock, Black’s collection of eleven stories triggered a bidding war among major New York publishers with prestigious Random House the victor. A bidding war for a story collection by an unknown writer! Incredible! Four years later, Black, followed up If I Loved You with her radiant novel Life Drawing, an unflinching and fraught examination of a long marriage, damaged by infidelity; threatened from both within and without. Like If I Loved You, Life Drawing garnered stellar reviews, international publication, and enviable sales, thus confirming critics’ predictions that Black’s was a signif-

Robin Black, this year’s final judge for the Marguerite McGlinn Prize for Fiction, and keynote speaker for Philadelphia Stories’ 2016 Push to Publish conference, seemed to burst, fully formed, upon the national literary scene with the publication of her story collection, If I loved You, I Would Tell You This. The book earned Black rave reviews, comparisons to Alice Munro, and the consensus that an important new literary voice had just emerged – basically from nowhere. Literary cognoscenti in Philadelphia knew otherwise, for Black, who’s lived here all her adult life, and raised her family here, had been charting her own quiet but determined path in local writing groups for many years, creating for herself, before and after earning her MFA in the Warren Wilson low residency

WATER BED by STEPHANIE KIRK

icant new literary voice. “I am anything but a haphazard writer,” Black said in a recent interview with Philadelphia Stories. The process Black described is very much like what Louise DeSalvo has articulated in her eponymous book, The Art of Slow Writing. “Often stories take me many years,” says Black, noting that she has dozens of unfinished stories languishing on various hard drives. “And I revise endlessly…every word is considered many times.” Like Munro, Black completes only one or two stories a year. She spent four years on a novel that she eventually trashed. But the final story she wrote for her collection, A Country Where You Once Lived, as complex and multi-layered as a novel, took her only eight months. “That was short!” she said. For Black, stories “usually begin with some random thought about an interesting situation. Or about a dilemma someone might find themselves in. The truth is, at the time I start typing, I am working with next to nothing, and very often the original spark is gone long before the story is complete.”

and over again.” Salvation or, at least satisfaction, comes from “realizing that you are writing for those people who like and relate to and respond positively to your work, and emphatically not to try to get every reader out there to love your work...Knowing that, believing it, helps a lot, though the fantasy of universal love is a sneaky one, and a resilient one too.” Like Munro, Black rarely strays far from home and family life. “I never set out to center my stories around the home, but that’s where I was then, and I wasn’t the sort of writer to reach way outside my own experiences in that way.” Black’s abiding fascination with marriage, she says, is “ a subset of a fascination with all relationships. But maybe what interests me most about marriage, and not only between a man and a woman, is the free will …you can’t choose your family. But you do choose your spouse – sometimes more than one spouse, if the first choice, or the second, is wrong.” Many writers are smart about romantic relationships, but few manage the rare wisdom Black offers in her consideration of marriage: “Anyone with any years at this will tell you, it’s not always easy. All relationships change over time. One party may change dramatically, but in the traditional marriage model, that isn’t supposed to result in changes in closeness or in the basic structure of the relationship. That means that marriage asks a lot of us as we grow through life. It asks that we accommodate changes in our partner and also that we balance our own changes with the needs of our partner.” She also points out that marriage is a relationship “in which there is a single, generally agreed-upon form of disloyalty: sexual straying. It’s hard to think of another relationship we have that has so obvious and singular a line that can’t be crossed. For literary purposes, that’s one of the reasons that betrayal stories (and my novel is one) are so tempting to write. There’s a crisis that we recognize as universal in traditional monogamous marriages. So what happens if that line is crossed?” ‘What happens’ after infidelity is the concern of Life Drawing and several stories in If I Loved You. The challenge for Black has been to write ‘a new story’ about this ancient and universal story. “How do you do so without either romanticizing the notion of marriage or denigrating it?” she asks rhetorically. The answer can be read in her stories and her novel. It wasn’t until Black was about halfway through graduate school, and had had a few published pieces, that she began to think of herself as a writer. “But in retrospect I was wrong. I had been a writer for years by then, because I had been writing. Like many people I felt insecure and looked beyond my own commitment for some kind of official right to the word. But I believe strongly that everyone who writes, who devotes themselves to it in whatever time they have, who cares about it, is a writer.” Her recent publishing successes notwithstanding, Black says her most rewarding professional experience so far has been teaching. “It is a wonder to have books published and have them read, and it’s amazing when a review is a rave – which doesn’t happen every time, for sure! But there is nothing like getting to teach. The pleasure of helping people who so, so want to get better at this, understand a new concept, or take a leap forward in their work, is just incomparable.”

Many writers are smart about romantic relationship, but few manage the rare wisdom Black offers in her consideration of marriage. Black’s recent successes have come to her as a ‘late bloomer.’ She did not begin publishing until after she’d mostly raised her three children. In an essay in Crash Course, her just published collection of craft and personal essays, she describes a 15-yearlong period, from 1987 to 2001, during which she not only didn’t write but did not read fiction. Reading fiction, she theorized in the essay, “became too painful to me, too much of a reminder of what I’d been unable to do.” In retrospect she realizes that she didn’t abandon “the joy of reading fiction” because she had a “houseful of children” and the many responsibilities bound to running a household, but more likely because she had, at that time, abandoned her deepest ambition, writing books. By the time Black finally turned to writing seriously, she was obsessed “with worries about being an unfashionable writer. I knew that my work …was neither edgy nor, in the most obvious senses, unconventional. These worries slowed me down.” A ‘turning point’ story for her, and still one of her favorites, is Immortalizing John Parker, a 34-page tour de force meditation on identity, love and betrayal, loss and forgiveness, as experienced by a septuagenarian painter, Clara. She’s commissioned to paint the portrait of an elderly man who might be sliding into dementia. “He’s lost and growing more lost by the moment,” Clara thinks while pondering the ‘dullness’ of his face. “That’s what the eyes of her painting will show, she hopes, a man in the process of becoming lost.” Black says she wrote Immortalizing John Parker “in a spirit of self-acceptance…very early on in the process of writing that story I explicitly gave myself permission to channel my inner sixty-five year old British woman.” That story taught her, she says, that she must tell the stories she has to tell and must tell them in her own way. “We are who we are, which means we write what we write. Such turning points, the writer wrestling with subject matter and style, Black notes, “may have to be engaged over and over

Julia MacDonnell’s second novel, Mimi Malloy, At Last! was published by Picador in 2014 to widespread praise in national media. The paperback and a German-language edition were published in 2015. Her first novel, A Year of Favor, was published by William Morrow & Co. Julia is the nonfiction editor of Philadelphia Stories.

BOOK REVIEWS Splendor Emily Bludworth de Barrios (H_NGM_N BKS, 2015)*

In her 2015 full-length poetry collection Splendor, Emily Bludworth de Barrios grapples with morality and virtue as qualities at odds with a contemporary, consumerist lifestyle. She uses lines from Horace Walpole’s 1764 Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto as the titles of the individual poems, a move that highlights the distinctions between righteousness and vice. An online summary of Otranto suggests that its central antagonist, Manfred, is consumed by greed, lust, and fear of a prophesied fall from power. The object of his lust, the princess Isabella, rejects Manfred in favor of the noble young peasant Theodore. Similarly, the reader is asked to consider her values in relation to her privilege. Titles such as “are the devils themselves in league against me?”

and “were tempestuously agitated, and nodded thrice, as if bowed by some invisible wearer” create a verbal history -- the conflicts here are not new. The juxtaposition of archaic lines from Walpole and Bludworth de Barrios’ contemporary tone creates friction: as Walpole presents clear good and bad characters, Bludworth de Barrios ranks impulses along a spectrum. We cannot navigate today’s world without some moral struggle. In “May the saints guard thee,” she writes, “There are effortless persons,/and you are not one of them.” One of the obstacles to virtue in these poems is the speaker’s desire for comfort. In “I would pray to heaven to clear up your uncharitable surmises,” Bludworth de Barrios writes, “I always knew I would/marry a rich man.” Through a swirl of short lines, she points to the literary sources of her expectations. She amends her earlier statement: It was not wealth I was after but more like acclaim or arrival. How beguiling is the sense of unearned accomplishment (10). The accumulation of things: “You almost love the things you own./With a fitful, envious love” (“were tempestuously agitated…,” 15), expands to include the accumulation of people: “Friends like

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Most is the glory I shall try to people won't of expression. tell the truth, realize that but the result writing is a craft. will be fiction.

poetry, creative nonfiction, short-story, novel, dramatic writing, or writing for children and young adults

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accessories…” (“and she was not sorry,” 19). The self expects to be always central: All of the advertisements are like you you you. Like this coffee travelled 1000 miles to be the two perfect inches of your espresso (“any increase of tenderness to me,” 17). The speaker of these poems knows what is right and just -- and knows the effort required to maintain that rectitude. The voice in these poems strives to navigate an evolving moral landscape while seeking to insulate herself from -- or to anticipate -- critique. We are “infants.... flying/across the sky” without anchor: “With/a crooked list of priorities” (“If thou art of mortal mould,” 75). In the poem “I! My Lord!” Bludworth de Barrios considers the upright conscience that knows better: Your ideal self has always been lurking. Somewhere the ideal self is sudden and kind (58). Graceful and bracing, Bludworth de Barrios’ Splendor urges close examination of the values and virtues we celebrate (or ignore) in ourselves and our surroundings. If we can read the literature of the past as a template, we must learn to read our own stories and recognize our own heroism and villainy. — Courtney Bambrick

an angel surprised”. Each piece continues to sway and swoon from memories of death, family and school days, pausing occasionally to smile and turn to face something purely innocent, as is shown in the lighthearted “Sunday at the German Bakery” where a girl dreams of a boy “who clerked at a bakery, slipping his fingers in and out / tying the knot on the white box.” She is taken with him and delivers imagery we can almost taste, with “hot-crossed lovers nibbling / apple cobbler, yolked together / hobbling along until the glaze wears off.” Part Four carries us into Dolan’s later years, her life still intertwined with life and death, now as a mother and grandmother. With grace she describes her grandson with Down’s syndrome, taking care to maintain her love and admiration for him and the patience of her own daughter. Dolan’s poetry is real, it is grainy, and in the best way it is plain. Every word crawls from the page with a simplicity that makes it all so very relatable; and that is just what keeps us contemplating the beauty in every piece. A Secret to Long Life is a collection of family history that will remain timeless even after the pages have yellowed.

— Nicole Marie Mancuso

*Emily Bludworth de Barrios’ poem “All Souls’” was selected as an editor’s choice in the 2013 Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry

A Secret of Long Life: Familial Heartache & Happiness in Elegant, Timeless Fashion Liz Dolan Poet Liz Dolan paints the ordinary in passionate hues in A Secret of Long Life, a collection of poems that move across the page with the sweet, haunting ache of memory. From now distant days as a Catholic school girl to the death of a young brother that still lingers, Dolan drags us through every human emotion via very simple, very real human experiences. With a chapbook sliced into four equally heavy parts, Dolan begins our journey with stories of her mother, glimpses into her childhood, and the first gut-wrenching look at a small brother lost too soon. In “The Boy Who Swings on Our Line”, a young girl watches as the ghost of her sibling dances through the family laundry hung out on the line. Dolan writes, “From the open window / I see as he swells my father’s overalls, / crooks the knees and bellows as though / with Dad he flags the six a.m. from Darien.” The poem ends in childlike melancholy, with the girl telling her brother to leave the family alone. “I am not sure / if I want him to stay and play. I lie. / Go, release us all from your awful presence, / airborne shape-shifter, powerful child, so we can smell fresh cotton against our pasty cheeks”. Dolan depicts the nuns of her youth as elegant, damaged powerhouses, a refreshing step back from a usually stone-like stereotype. Her admiration for her teachers shines through in pieces like “I Longed to Be as Lovely”, in which she describes Sister Purissima “in her opal linen gown / her tanned cheeks backlit by her veil / like

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Sounds Poem by Wilson Roberts

Sounds within a house change when the last of the dead are taken; echoes of dust settling air drying, cracking: emptiness has a resonance. That is why we point mutely at paintings, lamps, furniture, small things favored by memory; whisper when we must speak: the brass mortar and pestle, the painting, cows grazing, the cut glass sherry decanter. Words profane that holy moment, instant, in truth, when the dead are again present, the dust suspended, the air moist; we see them move the pestle, straighten the painting, for they have been taken quickly, leave slowly, and are gone only after we mete out those favored things, load our cars with boxes, knowing upon what mantles and shelves, tabletops and walls we will place them. We go to our homes and behind us the dust settles, the air dries, and outside the house the tap tap tapping of a sign being placed at the edge of the lawn by the street.

Wilson Roberts lives in Greenfield Massachusetts and St. John in the Virgin Islands. Raised in Newtown, Bucks County, his short fiction and poetry have appeared in The Red Clay Reader, Balsams and Hemlocks, Crucible, The Appalachian South, Radical America, Philadelphia Stories, The Massachusetts Review, and The Journal of Caribbean Literatures. His novels, including All That Endures, are published by Wilder Publications.

The Pep Talk Aimee LaBrie

My mother bought tickets to a book luncheon the other day. I'd never heard of that, but it's a place where a lot of women wearing Chico's mix-and-match outfits spend $60 to eat chicken while listening to an author speak about his or her books. The author in this case was a very nice man who had published twenty books. He told charming stories about writing, including one where he said that when he had a full-time job, he would write from 5 to 7 a.m. and then hop on a train to Manhattan. Hearing him, I felt ashamed. Why wasn't I getting up two hours early to write? (Confession: on a very good day, I get in 30 minutes. Most of that is journal writing, so I only occasionally attempt fiction.) Then he told a story about writing a short story for a magazine by first reading six months of back issues of the magazine to determine that editorial board's particular formula. And I thought, “Why haven't I done that?” And he also talked about getting 250 rejection letters. And I thought, “Why don't I get more rejection letters?” Finally, I had to stop comparing myself to him because my jimmy leg was making the water glasses tremble and the ladies were eyeing me over their reading glasses. Failure is one of the main constants in a writing life. You fail when you get a rejection letter. You fail when you only finish two days of National Novel Writing Month. You fail when you aren't able to get published in The New Yorker, or when you forget to sign up for Breadloaf or AWP, or when you neglect to renew your subscription to Poets & Writers. You can add them up in the self-torturing list you run through late at night. But really, the only way you fail is when you don't write at all. Unlike many well-known and well-published writers, most of us do not have the ability to take six months off from work to go write in the mountains. We did not ever land a job teaching to have our summer free. We have year-round professions, kids to raise, dogs to walk and, sometimes, we have TV shows to watch. We have to make a living, because writing fiction or poetry does not typically bring in the big dough. Most of us have jobs that consume two-thirds of our waking hours or more.

TEEN

ers and ng writ Valley of you aware munity a com from the Del artists

You can even fail at writing and still be a writer. There is no such thing as a real writer. You write and get published, you are a writer. You write and don't get published, you are a writer. If you need to, hold on to the fantasy that your manuscripts will be published posthumously to great critical acclaim. Be sure to keep the best work in a waterproof envelope marked “for Scribner’s after my death.” Now, that doesn't mean you do not have to write at all. You should try to write. If an opportunity comes up to have a weekend to yourself or an hour, you could use that to write. Or not. It's the pressure of the "shoulds" that can destroy your desire and enjoyment. "Should be" writing for five hours on a Sunday. Should be getting up at 5 a.m. Should be published by now. Should have done more than two days of NANO. Stop. Writing is supposed to be something you like to do, not something you torture yourself with. You don't have to enjoy it every second, but if it feels like an intrusion or a trial, don't do it. But if it's important to see your words moving across a page, write. Do your best at creating some discipline if you can. Your best effort might be five minutes a day. Or only when you're on the subway in the morning staring at grumpy faces. But five minutes might turn into more. Or not. Five minutes a day for a lifetime is like…a lot of minutes. Here are some other things you can do: Send out your work. Start a writing group. Sign up for an online class. Take yourself seriously for once in your goddamn life. It's fine to fail. Most writers fail many, many, many times before they get published. The other secret few writers admit to is that you can get published and still feel like you failed. Failure is a state of mind that can continue on even after very obvious successes. “Fail and ye shall find.” I think Shakespeare said that. Not many people know this, but along with plays, he also wrote a ton of sci-fi fiction about talking squirrels.* Did any of those stories get published? No, but I believe he loved writing them. (*I made all that up. I am allowed. I am a writer.)

PS Teen is an annual magazine published each Fall featuring local writers and artists aged 13-18.

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Why I Be Writin’ Stuff Poem by Joseph Earl Thomas

Because I never learned a damn thing in school, since D.A.R.E. came long after truth. Because maps don’t work here, and there is oil, but “The Rainbow isn’t Enuf.” Because ain’t no nigga playing Spider-Man Or James Bond. Because it’s raining right now in Antigua, but North Philly is lovely this time of year. Because gaps need bridges, but snitches get stitches Plus, Anything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law. Because there are no mirrors big enough. Because singing out loud demands confidence. Because Mr. Emas died half-way through graphic design class— took my visual art with him. Because anxiety wasn’t uniquely holding a gun to my head, And Frankford by-laws state I should have long since been dead. Because so few cats can swim and even salmon die trying.

Joseph Earl Thomas is a Writing Studies graduate student at Saint Joseph’s University. A sometimes poet and memoirist, he specializes in speculative fiction centered on disenfranchisement, coming of age as a person of color and prolonged encounters related to war. He blogs on Birth World Problems at josephearlthomas.com.

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