On:

What changed my life one day was that I heardwhat happened one hundred ten years agofrom one who owed her being to a bird. Your first reaction hearing this: absurd,right? How could that be, and how could she know?I was suspicious too until I heard about the village razed, survivorsContinue Reading

On:

“The child fathers the man?” ’Tis true!But note: the child is never through— whence springs so much of tragedyand comedy like you and me. James B. Nicola is a returning contributor. The latest three of his eight full-length poetry collections are Fires of Heaven: Poems of Faith and Sense, TurnsContinue Reading

On:

They said in ancient Greece and Rome and suchlocales—and maybe everywhere, I guess—that household gods—say, ancestors’—would lookupon us in the home, as from an urnwith ashes in it on a mantelpiece—or even absent ashes or the vase. But I have my Italian grandfather’sold grooming scissors, made when things would last,andContinue Reading

On:

The spider has devoured every curdand Muffet’s started fading fast away.Rudolph’s requisitioned to the herd, and Chicken Little’s left with too little left to say. The wind once in the willows has stopped blowing.The Phantom Tollbooth’s toll is way too high.Naughty puppets’ noses have stopped growing, and Chicken Little’s stoppedContinue Reading

On:

Uncouth it was, a fall from grace, but when we passed the thick-barked tree I heard it, rustling, asking me to carve initials on its face— four—enclose them, and then trace a heart around them, making two one, albeit metaphorically. For Antony and Romeo are known only from what wasContinue Reading