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…