Journey As A Circle Searching For Itself
By Carl Kopman
Prelude
To A
Mendocino
Suite
Just Out of Reach Of a Tangled Web Is Simplicity
By Carl Kopman
While searching for the mortuary box containing Robert Levin’s ashes in the basement of my Berkeley home I found in an anonymous old carton, amongst other things, a poem I’d written back in my day, Gypsy No Eyes!
An Evening Walk
By Raleigh Ellisen
As she did every summer day Mitoyo prepared a cup of tea and a few crackers when Koichi returned from his long hours as a railway dispatcher. They talked about events of their day, and, while neither mentioned it, they hid their disappointment that there was no letter from their son Kenji. After his tea Koichi took one cigarette from a pack, carefully placed it in his shirt pocket, and started on his long evening walk.
Getting Old
By Martina Reaves
I wandered from my second-floor office down to Fourth Street to indulge myself after a particularly difficult afternoon. Even though it was February, the afternoon sun blazed, the air was still, and the sidewalks were crowded with folks pretending it was spring.
Glory Days
By Karen Hunt
Glory days, well they’ll pass you by / Glory days in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Bruce Springsteen
Visit to a Mental Institution
By Carl Kopman
I was sitting on a wheelchair parked in the atrium of Peaceful Springs tearing at leaves on a potted Philodendron when my wife approached cautiously. I was expecting the visit but in a daze from the voltage they were zapping through my brain.
Grace Paley’s Pen
By Carl Kopman
I was driving my cab through the dark velvet underground of Lou Reed streets in New York City about the time Jimmy Hendrix stepped one electric foot onto the stage at Monterey Pop and Neil Armstrong planted the other on the moon. I could barely see her in the rain reflections of my headlights when she hailed me at Workman’s Hall.
Fading To Dark
By Carl Kopman
“A guy mixes reality with fantasy by living his life on television while holding down a job as a stock investment guru on CNN. That’s me, Danny Abraham, reality personality extraordinaire. I have bounced from show to show, station to station into and out of your homes for the last 15 years. And through those years, you have monitored my joys and despairs.
The Gals
By Karen Hunt
My mother stands at the kitchen window in a worn chenille housecoat and bunny slippers watching Uncle Roscoe hang up laundry on the clothesline next door. She lights a Chesterfield. Her ritual is to take a long drag, pick the tobacco off of her tongue, then blow out a small gray cloud. She’s fond of saying that if she liked cigarettes any better, she’d eat the goddamned things.
Einstein In Passing
By Carl Kopman
If Einstein was right in my misunderstanding of e=mc squared, and if Freud was right in my misunderstanding of myself, and if my mother was right when she said, “ Get moving! What do you think…