Tomorrow
editor's note
Never Jam Today
“The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday – but never jam today.”
“It MUST come sometimes to ‘jam today’,” Alice objected.
“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every OTHER day; today isn’t any OTHER day, you know.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”
“It MUST come sometimes to ‘jam today’,” Alice objected.
“No, it can’t,” said the Queen. “It’s jam every OTHER day; today isn’t any OTHER day, you know.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Alice. “It’s dreadfully confusing!”
poetry
Those Silenced by the Storms
Some days you might turn and glimpse
our faces in a crowd—long enough to know
you were mistaken, and mourn again.
He Who Cannot Love
our faces in a crowd—long enough to know
you were mistaken, and mourn again.
There is a man. He is leaving you
are not sure you want him
to stay.
Rehearsal
are not sure you want him
to stay.
A dank half-stair at the back of the house led to the basement door.
The air in the well cooled as it sank, sucking us down.
We always descended solemnly, got married at the bottom.
The air in the well cooled as it sank, sucking us down.
We always descended solemnly, got married at the bottom.
fiction
An Act of Contrition
I’ve recently taken up gardening. I like annual flowers, even though people tell me they’re more work. I’ve planted zinnias, cosmos, petunias and salvia in a bed at the front of the house. They’re all different heights and colors and none of them go together very well. Teddy says it’s obvious that I wasn’t meant to be a gardener. Maybe not, but I’m diligent. I deadhead the petunias twice a week and fertilize the soil once a month. I pull weeds. I make an effort.
On This Day
Richard Breakman is forty-three years old and has a soft belly that would not look out of place on a toddler. A milk belly, his mother might call it, in that pleading way of hers that she uses when something distressing appears on the nightly news. Richard visits his mother, Ava, every Sunday. He parks his small Fiat Punto outside her redbrick bungalow and lets himself in. Sundays are his bewildered days.
hair today, gone tomorrow
He remembers how they would argue about her long hair clogging the shower drain. Frustrated he would pull it out and leave it between the soap and the shampoo like a little totem of her wrongdoing.
Pillow Fort
Carl and I made sure to talk about children once we’d started dating seriously. And we had both agreed that we wanted kids – a small litter of them, maybe two or three. Back then, when it was all hypothetical, I could contemplate those kinds of numbers with gusto.
To the Bright Blue Skies and Away
“Put on a sweater,” Kate always advised, and Rebecca did. She put on sweaters and sweatshirts and flannel and cradled hot water bottles in her arms like a baby - but she questioned how a house could be a home if the cold she felt on the bus ride back from campus continued to thrive unchallenged between its walls.
nonfiction
Keys
I have no memory of leaving my key.
I must have done so – I can name the locks accessed by every key in my possession and my ex-husband’s front door is in no way among them – but my mind is a total blank when I try to recall the actual moment of forfeiting my right to enter that home.
All The World's Undefined Weariness
I must have done so – I can name the locks accessed by every key in my possession and my ex-husband’s front door is in no way among them – but my mind is a total blank when I try to recall the actual moment of forfeiting my right to enter that home.
I don’t want to write a Holocaust story. But it’s necessary for understanding the protagonist – me. I happen to be part of a story and a family deeply affected by history.