“Wordless,” an essay by Susan Moldaw.
All we can say at the end. “She rubs my knuckles and down each finger with even sweeps of her thumb, her other hand bent clawlike beside her face.” Orange Memorial Hospital. Photograph by Chad Hunt. The old woman lies in the fetal position in her hospital bed, breathing the slow, rhythmic sighs of death. She moans,...
“Kuan Yin,” a memoir by Judy Anne Wilson: Coming out as a lesbian in the first years of the AIDS crisis.
“I imagined his losses as paving stones, each appearing one after the other, each the dispossession of a dream, a hope.” Pride. Photo by the author. – Kuan Yin I was such a newbie, arriving in San Francisco on a rare sunlit afternoon in mid-November 1983. A picaro of sorts, by way of trust-fund-baby hippie communes and other,...
“Elegy for My Mother,” a poem by Ann Quinn.
Life, death, transfiguration. “It was to be a good death, a clean death, a loving death …” — 1. October 11, 1970 I am in my first-grade classroom in Lexington Park, Maryland. The teacher has made a space capsule from a card table and blanket. Inside are two children picked to be astronauts, a boy...
“I Got Grown,” a memoir by Joe Milan, Jr.
A young man starts his working life where others’ lives end. “We worked well together. We hustled. We batched. We finished our tasks quickly, all the while head-banging to Alice in Chains or nodding to the Ray Brown Trio. I thought I’d finally found my stride.” Kachina doll class. Photograph by Chad Hunt. I Got Grown In the year...
“A Couple In,” a poem by Jenny Gillespie Mason.
Love at the end. “the two pulses stayed, mixed up, so much brighter …” A Couple In —– —–I am one of the two who all those years did not find much to repel the mixing of our pulses —– They stayed not as one firm rhythm —– —– —– but together in fits like happily neglected green...
