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Grandmother
My grandmother was a pirate. The other was an astronaut. She would have been, anyway, had she not failed her medical exam due to large traces of cocaine in her bloodstream. She was also a drug runner across the border, much to the shame of my father and uncle.
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The Marvels of Creative Writing
A week ago, I sat down with famed Princeton creative writing instructor Gabe Hudson. Aside from being loved by his students, he is an Editor-At-Large at McSweeney’s and the author of Dear Mr. President. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, GQ, and The Village Voice, among other national publications.
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June 15, 1936
Billy stands in the stern, chin tilted upward and twenty-gauge at his feet, dipping that pole into the night water like a gondolier and pulling us along in rhythm. My arm muscles are getting sore as I steady the sides so that the boat doesn’t tip us over into the swamp like it did last…
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Black Stone on White Stone
I will die in Paris on a day of torrential rain, a day I can somehow already recall. I will die in Paris —I don’t flinch at the thought— perhaps on a Thursday, like today, in the Fall.
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Two Responses to Princeton Fashion Show Article
Last night my daughter, Lauren Lyon 06, read me excerpts from the recent Nassau Weekly article blasting the Princeton fashion show, Operation Style. Although there were many inaccuracies relative to the actual cost of the event, the school’s financial participation, and the money raised, my overall concern relates to the tone of the article and…
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Let my last words be “good night”
Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something. -Pancho Villa, last words Let my last words be “good night” Even if I don’t have time to utter them As a Mercedes truck smushes me Under the moon At the intersection in Times Square. Tell them I said “good night” Even as I…
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The Way Things Might Have Been
In autumn (or fall, as we sometimes called it) we wore woolen sweaters, checkered corduroy, held hands tightly, snuggled for warmth against brisk north winds; We went apple-picking, fell down laughing on yellowed orange leaves, talked of favorite authors, of Franny and Zooey and our own lost childhoods, of deepest dreams tucked beneath dark library…
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Two Poems
On Conception Love making ends bottoms in seats – Virgin beginning from another virgin taken, And all hands on 12-day old heart beats. Or pre-determined Dates, earmarked for ovial optimism By women of long aching maternity, are vesicles of syncopated fornication. Or shouts: “It’s hot as hell” On a night built of steam, the sex…
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Celebrity and Anonymity
On February sixteenth, at author and professor Joyce Carol Oates’ reading in McCormick Hall, the front rows of the auditorium are filled with a veritable Who’s Who of campus luminaries.
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Celebrity love/Or infatuations/Haiku form, sometimes
We stole Professor Cornel West from Harvard. I Guess we’re not racist. Angela Hodgeman Sends work notices and draw announcements. Delete. CB, I’d like a Sandwich. But only if it’s Not too much to ask. Chapman likes to sing Aloud to himself on the streets. Please stop it, Chapman. Evan Baehr wishes That the world…