Origin Stories – Nancy Botkin

Icelandic by Nancy Botkin I’m down on my knees scraping paint off the floor with my thumbnail, washing my hands over and over, but it’s like trying to get blunt force trauma and strangulation out of the news. I went back and forth between Icelandic and Moonmist, colors suggesting cool and distant, colors with blue […]

Origin Stories – Judy Kronenfeld

Musical Surprise by Judy Kronenfeld All through the klezmer concert at the synagogue, all through the wailing, laughing, talk-back violin, the clarinet cavorting and kazatski-ing, and climbing up to cry from the rooftops, the cymbals shushing and tsk-ing, the sax keening and weeping its ecstasy of prayer, my dead father and mother sit down beside […]

Origin Stories – Karen Paul Holmes

So, Supposedly, We Each Have an Angel Over One Shoulder by Karen Paul Holmes But the thing is, we have to ask for help. Until we ask, the angel just has to sit or float there, filing its nails, plucking out loose wing feathers, bored silly watching the soap opera of our lives. When we […]