I am most grateful to Joy Stocke at the terrific Wild River Review, for asking me to write an essay on the suicide deaths of both my brothers, Bernie and Ronnie. This is the anniversary week of their deaths. The essay is called "April is the Cruelest Month" and if you would like to read it, please visit Wild River Review. And a blessed Easter/Passover to everyone.
On Saturday, I realized I'm going to have to restructure the novel I'm working on, which means a lot of long days for a while. So, I hope you won't mind if, for this post, I use an essay that was published a while back in THE LITERARY REVIEW (Farleigh Dickinson University), entitled When There's No Sky Left:
There is a moment of sweet tension as I hold the glass in my hand. The peat-rich fumes rise to my nose. The color is amber promise. I raise the glass to my lips. Molten honey in the gut. The switch flips. Sweet warmth begins to flow from my belly to my fingertips. The mind becomes soft and...
Earlier this week, a man called me from another city, a friend of my father's. I'll call him Joe. Joe has thirty days sober -- made it through the holidays -- but was having a bad day, full of anxiety, and was afraid he was going to drink again. He couldn't find my father, who has been helping him, and felt too nervous, he said, to call some of the other people who might...
Another Christmas gone and another new year on the way. I woke up this morning to find three deer sleeping in the back garden. It’s quite a normal thing to see them out there, lying close together, delicate legs tucked underneath them on the thick bed of leaves we pile up back there in the woods, eyes closed, obviously believing it’s a nice safe place. I take it as a sort of compliment animals feel safe in my garden, and I only shush them away when they’re eating the roses growing close to the house. Other than that, I figure there’s enough for all -- deer and ...
