​     Jeffrey Archer is a well known English best selling author of short stories and novels. His latest book is entitled Tell Tale Stories and consists of thirteen short stories and one miscellaneous chapter, 259 pages in all. I will give you a story by story summary, each story being a chapter in his book.
     The first story is a hundred word story he wrote for Reader’s Digest per their request. It has an O. Henry ending. Well written in one hundred words. Enough said. Can’t let the rview become longer than the story.
     Story number two was about who killed the mayor, that was the title Who Killed The Mayor, and was an easy one to figure out. It takes place in Italy. It was not  ‘unique’ like the title of the first story.
    With the third one he got me. I had no idea how it was going to end. The story led me elsewhere. It has a French title I can’t pronounce and is spelled Auvers-sur-Oise. I don’t know what it means either. Some place in France would be a safe bet I’d guess.
     In story number four he quotes Shakespeare to death. It is so overdone that it kills the story for me. I’m not enough of A Gentleman and Scholar, like the title, to appreciate it.
    The fifth story about love and war was an easy one to figure out too. Ended with a happy ending of course. After all, All’s Fair in Love and War, just like the title says.
    The sixth story is so so. It’s about a kind of entrepreneur in ‘The Car Park Attendant.’ Kind of not believable. No one could amass that fortune being a car park attendant even if he did kind of own the parking lot.
    The seventh story, A Wasted Hour, was not a wasted story. Good surprise ending here. I never would have guessed it.
     Story eight is The Road To Damascus. The title fits the story perfectly. Somewhat moving ending to this journey.
     For story number nine The Cuckold the title fits too and it has another twist ending. It is a well written mystery. Only one clue, that turns out not to be a clue, turns the tale.
     Story ten, A Holiday of a Lifetime, goes unfinished. There’s no ending to it. Yeah that’s right. Instead the author gives you a choice of three endings he wrote and tells you to pick your own. What a way to weenie out.
     Story eleven another con, Double or Quits. Good thing it quit when it did.    
     Now story twelve The Senior Vice President was a good one. Reminded me of Elmore Leonard with all bad guys trying to out con each other. You’re pulling for our hero the senior vice president to pull it off as his plan takes the expected unexpected turns and twists. A winner of a story it is.
    Story thirteen, A Good Toss To Lose, was takes place during World War I and though somewhat predictable was enjoyable and somewhat sad too.
     Now the last chapter isn’t even a story at all. It's the first four chapters of a book of the author’s to come out in November of 2018. Yes that’s right 2018. He uses Tell Tale Stories published in the fall of 2017  to plug a book coming out a year away. Now if the book was coming out in December of this year, just in time for a great holiday gift or some other holiday plug, that would make sense, but nobody is going to remember it a year from now. What were the publishers at St. Martin's Press were thinking anyway. Definitely a poor business decision. Somebody’s head needs to roll. I never even read the four chapter come on. That’ll show ‘em.
    Overall the book was enjoyable. I recommend it. I like stories with quirky twisted endings and this book has its share in abundance. The only thing distracting about it was all the names and places over there in England. Like duh that mattered or something to me an American like me. His English audience though probably appreciates it. And the author, being English, does use quite a lot of uniquely English phrases throughout his stories. But nothing there’s more difficult to interpret than, ’a spot of tea old chap.’ Oh well. Cheerio and Ta Ta for now. And oh yes, keep a stiff upper lip.

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

Might Amazon’s concept for secure package delivery to one’s house mean bringing back an  area common before climate-controlled homes?
            Houses once had vestibules.  The front door opened to a space with another door that then led to the interior.  By closing the exterior first, the ‘cold air’ didn’t whoosh into the foyer.  When leaving, the exiting person shut the interior followed by the main door with its latch and locks.
            Plaster walls, common in that era, didn’t just mark specific rooms but also offered privacy.  I could cut out a dress pattern in the dining room as I so liked the mahogany table with its wide surface and my mother didn’t object to the marks that denoted ‘living’ and ‘using’ was being done by a tangible piece of wood.  She could be cooking in the kitchen, my younger sister might be in her bedroom upstairs reading, my older sister could be rehearsing her role in the school play while standing in the living room, and none of us could see each other.  A closed door, made of solid wood, ensured we would not be disturbed in our bedrooms as I listened to the radio’s presentation of “Lux Presents Hollywood”, while something else was going on I couldn’t hear from another area.
            Today’s houses are ‘open spaces’ promoted, perhaps, by builders who could make a profit since walls, two by four supports, doors, wallboard, paint could be eliminated under the guise of ‘modern’.  Kitchens have counter stools, difficult for older people, rather than actual tables and chairs in what used to be a dinette. There are fewer cabinets.  Where are second sets of dishes placed?  And whatever happened to the shallow but wide pantry, the broom closet?  Cleaning equipment, like a vacuum, is generally pressed against a winter coat in the main hallway closet.  Plastic replaced copper for plumbing pipes, and ‘appearance’ rather than performance dictates to builders.  Individuality cannot be shown in communities that insist all siding be a choice of a couple of colors, rural mailboxes be clones on one another, sheds in yards are taboo. Yet we currently have artificial intelligence able to control routine tasks and enlighten us without need for bulky encyclopedias.  What structure could be useful from past floor plans?
            Amazon has a good idea to thwart the thieves that follow delivery trucks whose drivers place parcels on a step or by an entry and leave as their responsibility has ended.  Online shopping has caught on and more comes by such means. This company has already installed package-lockers in many apartment houses’ mail centers, and wants to have a pass-code to unlock a homeowner’s place, and a driver can place a package inside.  It claims a security camera will accompany this task so the homeowner can feel ‘safe’ about the house’s contents. How?
            Architects and marketers of technology: besides bringing back walls, ability to have privacy when wanted or share space with family when it’s a choice, maybe re-designing the vestibule could solve the problem of security?  This time, the key-locked door would be the ‘interior’ one and the outside door would actually be one Amazon’s people can pass-code.  If a building planner promotes this as successfully as lack-of-walls has been elevated to a position of status, it might work!

​

​No matter how many bridges I had burned, there still came a time in life when I looked back to their ashes. They were the important connecting points of my travel. Fire and distance alone could not obliterate what happened there. In those ash dumps scattered along life’s path, like the bread crumbs of Hansel and Gretel, laid the real happenings of existence. They only awaited the gentle winds of my revisit, however long in coming, to shed their cover.
     Along that same path, sturdily built monuments, large and small, served as counter balances to those places that once held flame and burned hot. The monuments received all attention, getting dusted off every now and then. But their shine remained ever cold and insignificant when likened to the hot coal of real life. Monuments had no passion, and consequently little if any love. However fire, or even its glowing red remnant, could transfix my vision and thoughts of a time that I had loved, or hated, or went crazy over. Obituaries were sometimes the hook that unwittingly brought me back to sift through those passionate places, looking for the glowing ember of such a time. It was one such obit that suddenly squeezed my heart as I sat on the rickety porch of my Appalachian shack reading my mailed Boston Globe. The squawk of a feeding squirrel and the incessant shrieks of a marauding blue jay were my Sunday morning hymns. But suddenly, when I saw her picture and the announcement of her death, I couldn’t hear them. I returned to another time. I was a young man who had just burnt my bridges of war and marriage and fallen for a love like none I had known.
 
 
After the Marines and Vietnam, while finishing up school, I met and married a co-ed from New York City. She promptly drug me off to Boston and let it be known, for the first time, that she was for all things sophisticated and properly ambitious. No way I could join up on that lead. When it became necessary to love it or leave it I was out and living alone with only a big sense of loss for all that I had put into it. Yet, despite the loneliness and alienation of the big city and no real experience at urban living, I managed to hang on to a decent job and get by. I could negotiate Boston and the New England countryside enough to hold myself in comfortable esteem with my peers. Even so, I was only on the fringe at work because they were all from the Boston area and had gone to school there. That left me as the only bona fide Southern Appalachian and war veteran among them. But it was a good workplace with expansive grounds where occasional small social activities, like picnics and softball games after work, took place. It was at one of those softball games that I discovered the young woman that would deliver me from the fringe to the main in such a way that all would become mine. Still young, and in many ways inexperienced--some might even say undeveloped despite the whirlwind of the war, college and a broken marriage--I really had no idea of what a beautiful young woman could do to me. An artist who was practiced and accomplished at what she did, she liked me the moment she saw my natural abilities on the softball field. Consequently, efficiently and artfully, she built a bridge for us.
     My feet barely touched the planks as we crossed that span. Her name was Mandy Black and I didn’t need her picture in my hands looking out at me from the newsprint to recall. I could see and remember her as clearly as if she were climbing the steps to my porch that very instant. She just might have been the time of my life.
 
Mandy was the sister of one of my co-workers and just happened to be visiting her brother that day of the softball game. Born and raised in the Boston area, she had a strikingly fair, almost Nordic appearance, except for her stature. She was of average height and weight for a fit young woman in her early twenties. With her short blonde hair that framed a face set with the purest crystal blue eyes, dusted underneath with a hint of freckles, she was plainly beautiful. Yet she carried herself in such a way that it seemed she was a little embarrassed by it. But, as I soon discovered, when she locked her eyes upon something or someone there was no covering the beauty that looked out. It simply was, and when she approached me after the ball game, the excitement and afterglow of the game suddenly paled.     
     “Hi, I’m Mandy. That was really a great throw Charlie, bet you used to play a lot of ball back in West Virginia,” she said as she extended her hand and playfully did a little half curtsey.
     Charmed and unexpectedly elevated, I let my fascination show.
     “How did you know that I was from West Virginia?”
     “Kevin told me,” Mandy replied.
     Kevin was her brother who worked just down the hall from me.
     “There’s a lot of similarity between that part of the Appalachians and the mountains just north of here,” she continued, “but the cultures are a little different. Some real diehard Yankees up here, and the winters are a little colder. No joking, that really was a great throw. You did play a lot of ball didn’t you?”
     I only heard about half of what she said. She was dressed in a very unremarkable sweat suit. It did not attract attention to her figure but as I watched her eyes, I saw a kaleidoscope of different crystalline shades of  blue winking and blinking at me. So beautiful were they that I had to steel myself a bit in order to just respond to her conversation.
     “Yeah, I guess you could say baseball was my first love. I did ok, got to play a lot. There wasn’t a lot of other things to do--not like around here.”
     I paused just long enough to see that Mandy really was interested in what I had to say and was waiting for me to continue.
     “I’ve made a couple of trips up north and you're right. The lay of the land there is a lot like where I come from. ‘Course here around Boston it’s quite different--don’t know if I’ll ever get used to so much city.”
     “You will,” Mandy assured me. “Boston has a lot to offer one who is keen enough to pick it up and by your moves and the work you do I’m sure you qualify.”
     Why this simple compliment had such an impact on me, I probably would never know but it did. I had been more than a little lonely and the way Mandy seemed to hint that I was not destined for more of the same allowed me to settle down some and reply, “Thank you, it’s really nice of you to say that.”
      Mandy just looked at me for a moment and said, “Nice is ok but it’s not where I’m really at Charlie. It’s been a real pleasure to meet you. Kevin’s waiting for me so I better go.”
     With that she turned and walked toward the edge of the field where her brother was waiting. As she hurried off she looked back over her shoulder with the damnedest smile and yelled, “Charlie Hayes, I hope you keep doing as good as you did today!”
     I stood there looking after her, trying to figure what had just happened. I knew that something had taken place, yet it was so undefined and beyond my normal interactions that I was at a loss to know just what it was. Slowly, I walked off the field, climbed on my motorcycle and headed home, stopping off at the liquor store for a bottle of tequila. Tequila to sit at my kitchen table with and replay the moments when I had met a really beautiful woman who seemed to like me.
    
In my kitchen, under the glow of the tequila, I figured that maybe the simple but hard way I came along would bring about those beautiful things of life after all. For a change, I actually felt a little pleased with myself and experienced the hope that came from realizing that my bad marriage could pass. Life went on and new relationships seemed possible.
    
Although a few years younger than me, Mandy had not spent those years locked away in the military performing to the rigid standards of a group that was not known for it’s social acuity or it‘s humanity. Mandy had been growing, developing, and learning about the turning of the times that had overtaken the country. With interest, she saw it all as the artist’s palette of human diversity and the key to greater expression.
     She attended art classes part time at a local community college near the Wayland home of her parents and worked most week-ends pumping gas at the north shore in Marblehead. Marblehead was exactly the kind of place you would expect to find lots of artists, very picturesque, and well known for it’s beauty.
     Mandy definitely had the artist’s way about her, and that made her a shoe-in for me. I yearned for those things that I had been drilled to degrade. However Mandy, not being ignorant of the power of her beauty, was an adventurer when it came to meeting and getting to know different kinds of men. That put me, with my Southern Appalachian lilted speech and reluctant delivery, in an interesting spot for her. She had recently broken up with her boyfriend, a Vietnam Vet and ex-army green beret, and moved out of the house she had shared with him. She had learned from Kevin about my Marine Corp service and perhaps that was why she was drawn to me. Whatever the reason, it was of no consequence to me.
     The next day at work when Kevin stopped by my work shop and told me that Mandy had been asking a lot of questions about me I was delighted. I got her phone number and, after Kevin left, called and told her what Kevin had said. I added that I had some questions that I would like to ask her, would she come over to my place for dinner that evening? She laughed and said that that would be fine, she would bring some artichokes to cook and make some hollandaise sauce, her specialty.
     
That evening Mandy bustled into my kitchen and showed as much command of its instruments as she seemed to have for all things, except perhaps softball. We ate baked cod and potatoes with artichokes dipped in the hollandaise sauce. It was the first time that I had eaten artichokes that way. Mandy seemed to take particular enjoyment in my initiation which made the meal really good and kept the air light.
     After dinner we had a couple of beers and chatted a while, trying to get to know one another. It was the first time that I had sat at the kitchen table with a woman and the time flew by. It was time for her to go. We stood and silently looked at each other as I moved closer, kissed her, and let my hand explore her breast through her shirt. The heavy firm globe of flesh that I caressed and gently lifted surprised me. It was one that any pinup would have coveted. I could only hope to more fully enjoy the pleasures of this beautiful woman another time.
     While we were walking to her car she told me how to get to her house and to stop by anytime that I wanted--her parents were traveling and she would be around there for the next few days.
     Watching her drive away, her taste on my lips, I knew that it would not be long before I would get to know her better. The weekend was just beginning and I knew that she would not be at the shore for the next few days. With my head in the clouds, I slowly returned to the house and looked forward to the morning ride to Wayland.
    
The next day, through the morning fog, I could barely read the Wayland exit sign on Rt. 128, the beltway that surrounded Boston. The motorcycle and it’s low hum of kinetic power felt good as I geared down and took the exit toward the address that Mandy had given me. It was only 9 AM but I just couldn’t wait to see her again and she had said anytime, so why not?                                    
     When I pulled into the driveway of the three story shake shingle house I noticed the pond beyond the backyard  and figured that it probably had some fish in it. It was quiet and natural out there among all the green.
     Mandy must of heard me pull in for she came out the side door with a big smile and a warm greeting before I had time to dismount. She began admiring my bike as she joked that I would have to let her do some wheelies on it. As she poked around the bike, just a common but speedy 750 Honda, she again made me feel special by playing on our differences in a way that complimented me. Maybe it was the artist’s way of capturing her subject but whatever the reason, I was unused to such things and appreciated her social grace.
     When she invited me inside we settled in the kitchen to drink some tea and make a little small talk. I felt relaxed in the little kitchen--just like the experts recommended, it faced south and through the windows I could see the fog lift and the sun break through. By the time we finished the tea the fog was gone and the sun filtering through the kitchen curtains created a homey, warm, and bright atmosphere that seemed to call for movement. Mandy took my hand and led me on a little tour of the place while she explained that she didn’t live there, she was just staying there until she found her own place. In fact she hadn’t even bothered to unload her things that were still stuffed into her Subaru station wagon parked outside. When we got back to the living room where we had first come in she commented on the open and unmade hide-a-bed and indicated that it was where she slept. I already knew that, and as the birds sang just outside the door, and the new sun dried the dew from all the green, I kissed that charming and lovely young woman and took her to that bed. After some first time awkwardness, and in the absence of any stoked passion, Mandy accepted me in simple missionary fashion.     
 
I stirred as Mandy continued to nap so I wrote a note with my phone number saying that anytime she wanted to see me, just call. Closing the door on my way out, I paused to gather in the sight of her sleeping. Like a naked nymph caught unawares in the late spring sun. It was a sight I would never forget.
   
I had been home no more than a couple of hours when Mandy called and asked if she could bring over some leftovers to warm up. I gladly accepted and drank a beer and considered our relationship while I waited. Happy that she had called, I figured that meant I could risk some involvement, and that my lovemaking had been at least adequate. I knew that the earth had not moved for either of us and I pretty well knew that Mandy had had enough experience to know about such things. Those things were important to me, since I didn’t get around a lot in that way.
     Mandy arrived quickly and we hungrily ate the leftovers, not saying too much, just looking at each other and smiling. We finished eating and, as new lovers so often do when there is no agenda, we ended up in my bedroom. I had a king size mattress and box springs that laid directly on the floor, a couple of pieces of old furniture, and not much else. This time when we took to bed it was not in the missionary fashion. While we were kissing and fondling each other and removing our clothes, Mandy intimated things to me that helped create a union that ranged far afield as we enjoyed each other.      
     In the after aura of sex we talked. Real and candid talk that, like a picture, was worth a thousand times more than usual conversation. .
     “That was really nice,” I said, “did you get as blown away as I did?”
     “You mean did I come,” replied Mandy.
     I studied her for a moment.
     “Yeah, that’s what I meant.”
     “It was very nice and felt really good,” Mandy said, “but I didn’t have an orgasm like you. I never do. Probably I just can’t.”
     Feeling a little crestfallen I thought about that.
     “What makes you think that you can’t?”
     “Oh, I don’t know. I’ve had men tell me that they could fix that but they never could. Why is it so important? It was good enough that you didn’t really know the difference anyway…. until you ask.”
     Sorry that I had brought it up, I tried to objectify the subject and get it away from the emotional realm.
     “Mandy, I’ve had a few women too. I guess your brother has told you that I have an ex- wife somewhere. But none of them were as beautiful as you. You seem so special to me that I just don’t think I will be able to hold you without the sexual connection.”
     Mandy pressed tighter against me and nuzzled the hollow of my neck.
     “You can hold me Charlie, never fear. Just don’t squeeze.”
     Again we came together until more talk was all that was left. She told me about her first time. At 16 and still in high school she simply decided that she didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. She went to a concert and picked up a heroin junkie. They went to his room where she watched him shoot up before giving herself to him, never telling him that it was her first time. Nor ever seeing him again afterward. When she got older and more mature she got into long haul truck drivers while they rested from the road. One married driver had wanted to rent her an apartment and keep her just so she would be available when he was not on the road. She mentioned that he was very large sexually, and when he was about to come it would hurt because of his size. She had not loved any of them nor stayed with them for very long before she was off to get a taste of other kinds of  men.
     Her butterfly-like movements among men had caused considerable damage to her family. She told of an older sister just as beautiful as she who, according to her, had brought home a lover some years before. He couldn’t keep his hands off the other two women in the family. He had three affairs going by pretending to be exclusively in love with Mandy, her mother, as well as her sister. It almost destroyed the family, and the way it was described to me I didn’t wonder why. But I remained cool while I listened to the story and kept my astonishment at the behavior of this proper New England family hidden. It was a tragic tale and I wondered how anyone caught in such a duplicitous sexual quadrangle could ever fully get over it. Yet it seemed that Mandy had moved through those times and paired with her picks quite naturally.
     The green beret that she had just rebounded from had sent her packing because he wanted freedom more than he wanted her. She told me that the soft ball game and the throw that I had made from center field was what had opened the window for her to emotionally break from that relationship. I didn’t care about her past nor did I consider myself as any part of a pattern. She was just too loving, intelligent, and beautiful for me to care about what might lie ahead. I loved her that quick and couldn’t get enough of her. 
     Mandy never really left my house after that day. A couple of days later I helped her store her things in my garage, taking from them only what she needed to live comfortably. Without a hitch our lives went on as before, only now I had someone to come home to. And Mandy would not be alone.
     However we were not always the only ones living in that part of the two family home. I shared the lower part of the up and down house with a guy named Ted. He was gone most of the time on business involving computer programming. Computers were beginning to break big at that time. Ted was not actually there when Mandy moved in. When he did arrive from one of his business ventures he was warm and friendly. He totally accepted her as my roommate and lover. Although Ted said that it wasn’t necessary, I did some calculations and paid a larger proportion of the rent. Ted accepted that in a manner of goodwill and with that everyone got covered and accounted for.
     Ours was a nice neighborhood in a close in suburb of the city. Our rather odd threesome lived quietly and comfortably within that residential middle class township. Most people kept to their own business. However the mix got even a little more unorthodox when Ted also met a woman. When he was in from business the four of us would keep the bathrooms, bedrooms, and kitchen busy. It was a real change of atmosphere for the house and everyone got along in fine fashion. It seemed that Ted and I had found real lives for one thing and the presence of women seemed to elevate our standing in the neighborhood as well. The owner and his family, who lived above, never said anything or intruded in any way. They obviously knew what was going on. Yet when I would occasionally pass them on the front porch they seemed friendlier and closer than before. It seemed that they liked the new large “family” on the first level that somewhat matched their large family above. It was a happy situation with Ted still being gone a lot. His girl only stayed there when he was around, giving Mandy and me the best of both worlds.
     However Ted’s relationship didn’t last long. The oldest by a few years, he was like me, having been married before. He appeared to be gun shy about commitment and his girl couldn’t handle that. Pretty soon Mandy and I were again the only couple downstairs as Ted continued to travel extensively.
     Spring turned to summer and Mandy and I would take long rides on the motorcycle, mostly up and down the coast. Or we would just hang around Boston. Mandy would show me the things that only a native would know. Plus we enjoyed the beautiful gardens and summer concerts that often played there. Once we rode up to Marblehead where Mandy introduced me to the young men she worked with at the gas station. They were several years younger and seemed like ok guys, perhaps just out of high school or starting collage. There was one little thing however, more like a feeling, that I noticed when I met them. Mandy kind of steered the conversation as I noticed a look in one of the guy's eyes. It seemed that he was experiencing something that was not normal and he was trying to disguise it. I just let it pass at the time. But looking back on it, I suspected that my mountain manner and speech had generated an inherent contempt in the young well bred boy of the affluent Marblehead community. Because of the way Mandy behaved, I believed that she had seen it as well and also tried to disguise it. Or perhaps she observed it because she was looking for it and used it as some sort of measure of me. Mandy was interested in character, perhaps to a fault, and she would sometimes create situations to indulge that interest.
     The meeting quickly passed however, and just being with someone I was in love with filled me up enough that I gave it no real consideration. Being with her, it all seemed perfect in a world that was developing exactly as it should.
     I was beginning to free himself of many of the things that had plagued me in the past. Life was good.
     As summer turned to fall we loaded Mandy’s station wagon with a little road  gear and headed up to Maine. We met her parents near Portland and went sailing. I had never been sailing before and, while anything I did with Mandy was fun, I was particularly looking forward to it. Although it did cross my mind that Mandy had an inordinate amount of tug on the reins of our experiences.
     On the way up, in a little pull off just across the border of Maine and New Hampshire, we spent the night in the back of her station wagon. In the morning we continued on up to the Portland area and located Mandy’s parents at the home of a family friend who owned the boat.
     Their house was situated in a pretty place right on the cove. The sailboat was anchored just offshore. Several other people were gathered there. The group standing around on the lawn reminded me of movie scenes about high society people and their little lawn parties by the sea. Mandy and I were introduced around by her parents and found that most of the guests seemed more interested in their particular conversations. They paused only long enough to smile and shake hands or nod, then returned to their conversations. There was not much interest in the new young couple in simple dress. That was fine with me. I was there for the boat and the sea. Mandy was not really the society type either. It didn‘t matter to her. She stayed near my side, which alone would have enabled me to confront and overcome any uncomfortable situation. Her parents, whom I barely knew, seemed of a different ilk as well. They were more down to earth as they helped the busy owners with the preparations around the house. In the brief time that they spent with us they were courteous and respectful without being parental in those ways that aggravate young adults. I appreciated that and was grateful for the absence of any fuss over us. I could easily see where Mandy got her poise from.
     The gathering on the lawn did not last long after the owners, Joe and Sally, appeared. Strikingly different from most of the others in manner, Joe gruffly acknowledged his guest as he trudged through the gathering to the water’s edge and the little dinghy tied up there. He was a short powerfully built man in his late fifties with short cropped hair and a curt way about him. He exhibited the minimum rote social stuff just enough to pass and still remain self contained. I liked him immediately and felt good about temporarily being under such a skipper.
     Sally, Joe’s other half, started rounding everybody up and shooed us down to the water, occasionally yelling something to Joe. The couple and their interactions while managing us landlubbers, and later with the boat itself, reminded me of  Bogart and Hepburn in The African Queen.
     Gathered by the water, we could clearly see the wooden friendship resting at anchor about 50 yards out. It was a beautiful 35 foot sloop with a large mainsail and a smaller jib forward. Highly polished with the sun making little sparkles along her wooden hull, she gently rocked in the swells. Her open deck was benched on both sides. It ran aft to the stern area and forward until it descended into a small cabin and sleeping quarters.
     Since the dinghy was too small to fit everyone in, Joe made a few trips out and back using a short chopping rowing motion to move us through the water. I noticed that he rowed  differently than I but failed to recognize why. I just chalked it up to style.   
     Joe ferried all aboard and motored the sloop out of the cove. Sally promptly told him to stop using the motor and set sail. Turning the sloop into the wind, Joe obeyed and popped the mainsail while Sally went forward and set the jib. Someone made a joke about how Joe would die if he ever got trapped in the mountains. Mandy and I just looked at each other and smiled.
     The benches on either side of the deck were full of passengers as the sloop cut through the water. The tack lowered one side of the sloop to just above the surface of the water. While everyone else white knuckled the benches, I was unable to just sit there. I got up and swung back to the stern with Joe, grabbed a spar and hung out over the sea as a counterweight. This increased the bottom draft and seemed to increase our speed. Joe just looked over at me but didn’t say anything.
     It was a fine day with brilliant sun and sea as we lightly bounced and sped through the white tops. As Joe changed the tack and the boom came around, he tossed me a small rope to belay near my perch. I didn’t know what the rope was for or anything about knots but I’d seen enough Popeye stories to know what he wanted. I wound the rope around a davit several times and tied a granny knot. For the first time since we had met, Joe became animated. 
     “Good Lord, man, how is anyone going to quickly get that rope free?”
     Joe untied my knot and, in two quick reverse moves, belayed it properly.
     Mandy laughed and yelled above the wind, “Yeah, but Charlie gets an A for his enthusiasm, doesn’t he?”
     Joe just frowned and gave no indication of what he might be thinking while some of the other men aboard looked like they were tasting sour grapes.
     That was one of the things that made me feel that Mandy was special. She could jump in to rescue her man with a humor that cut any ugliness out of the moment. Plain in her attitude but beautiful and intelligent in her performance, she was the kind of woman that I considered a treasured mate. 
     It was not long before Joe dropped the sail and anchored just off the back side of Peak’s Island, the home of an old World War II gun battery. Again, Joe had to ferry the passengers ashore and this time I insisted upon helping him. I had rowed many a boat and was sure that it would not be a problem despite Joe’s reluctance to turn the dinghy over to me. Finally Joe relented and I rowed one load to shore, accidentally splashing some of the passengers. They acted like I had done it on purpose. With their snoots in the air, they hurried away without a word.
     On the return trip to the sloop I began to see that the dinghy, amid the ocean currents, was very different from a rowboat. Using long strokes to move the dinghy, I couldn’t stay on course and ended up no where near the sloop. Plus I was unable to correct for it.     
     “Just hold it there,” Joe yelled.
     Trying not to act embarrassed, I yelled back, “How convenient!”
     Mandy, still on the sloop, laughed.
     The sloop came to me and I turned the dinghy over to Joe who, stone faced and without a word, took us to shore.
     We spent about an hour visiting the relics of the last great war and imagining what it must have been like during that time. Later we all ferried back to the sloop and had a couple of drinks, depending on your pleasure. Joe and most of the others had drinks while I had a couple of beers. Mandy had a beer as well. Shortly, as the sun got further west over the mainland, we weighed anchor and sailed home.
    
It was a very nice experience. I got a chance to see and experience a little of the old true Yankee spirit as it was contrasted with the modern Yankee crowd. Joe, his wife, and Mandy’s parents taught me a thing or two about the Yankee people. Foremost being that they should not be taken lightly. Perhaps it was then that I became a little more aware of the baggage that I carried and how it affected my life in New England. The sailing experience and a few other things shifted my perspective a little. I knew that Mandy had engineered our invitation and, although I only slightly knew the parents of the woman that I loved, I felt that maybe they were far more involved in my life than I knew. For some reason that made me a little uneasy. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for it.
     As soon as we got ashore Mandy and I headed for the Green Mountains of Vermont. After our many philosophical discussions about the mountains and the sea our trip seemed like a spiritual God send to me. Mandy seemed uplifted as well. Similar in our propensity for the melancholia that the city could foster, we just enjoyed being together in a natural environment, free of the distractions that often hurt us.
     It was not a long drive to the northern reaches of the Appalachians from the shores of Maine. We reached the Green Mountains in the late afternoon and located a private campground along the rural highway. It was run by an old man who told us where to camp plus he loaned us an axe to cut firewood.
     Solitude and quietness were plentiful. We were the only campers on the grounds of an evergreen forest.
     I used the axe to send chips flying as I cut up a small log while Mandy watched. She commented on the beauty of my swing, adding that it was not hard to see where I belonged when it came to the mountains and the sea. That surprised me some, her tendency to take a small fragment of something and from that come to a larger conclusion. But I loved her and anything that looked good to her I considered valuable.
     We ate some canned food, a few slices of bread, and sat by the fire drinking beer and talking about how nature could influence people's lives if they only gave it a chance. 
     Eventually the fire started to die down and darkness settled over the little campsite. The old manager stopped by just long enough to tell us that it was going to be a cold night. Since we were sleeping in the back of the station wagon we didn’t have to bother much. We promptly turned in when it became too dark to see. The temperature plunged.
     Somewhat to my frustration the cold kept my affectionate advances from going anywhere. I accepted Mandy’s declination and we slept warm and sound through the night, having adjusted well to our bedroom on wheels.
    
Snugly spooned together under several blankets, we woke up at first light to frost on everything. We were not in a hurry to leave our warm nest but we joined together by lowering our clothes just enough to do it. Mandy wondered aloud why we hadn’t thought of that last night. I knew that the reason was mostly because my ardor had not been shared by Mandy. It mattered not. To have her with me and in harmony trumped all that. Waiting for the right time for love making was small potatoes.
     Fully awake and in key, we hopped up and hustled around in the cold, gathering up our gear while the car warmed up.
     On the way out we thanked the old man as we returned the axe. He had seen us coming and was standing by the road as we approached. He took the axe, leaned down to look through the car window, and asked if we had stayed warm enough. We assured him that it had been no problem. He chuckled and told us to remember the place if we ever came back---said that he liked the young people best because they never made a fuss. After shaking hands, we drove off and picked up the interstate southeast into Boston.
    
Back home our lives picked up pretty much where we had been--work, school, and the domestic trivia of living together. It never seemed trivial to me however. I had pretty much all that I wanted with Mandy. That was something to always be excited about.
     As the autumn grew more chilled, we would sometimes sit on the back porch balcony just off the kitchen. We watched the trees in the park change colors and relaxed while talking about our days. Mandy would drink a little beer and sometimes share a joint if I had found some at work. My use of those things were much less than they had been so I was a little surprised when Mandy voiced her frustration with my use. I had felt that the things that I brought to our relationship were valuable enough to compensate for my use. They were a part of my cultural identity and the semi-outlaw attitude that I had held toward American society. They were things rooted in very personal parts of me, half born of my Vietnam experience. I wouldn’t consider changing that. Maybe I couldn’t change that. We never argued about it. In fact we had no real fights at all. After the wars with my ex-wife, I was more the peacemaker when we encountered rough spots. I had never lost my temper with her, not even close. Once she had become so upset and frustrated about something to do with me that she kicked a hole in the wall. I only cared about calming her down and making her feel better. It caused no anger in me. It only hurt that she felt so bad. In less than an hour it was over and she apologized, no big deal. I would repair the busted sheetrock myself, good as new. But under the surface Mandy had something going on and it was about our relationship. I was in so deep that I was blind to the gravity of it. Besides, she seemed to come out of her funk when we decided to go to Martha’s Vineyard for a night and a day.
    
Martha’s Vineyard was an island about seven miles off the shore of Cape Cod. Just south of Boston, it could only be reached by plane or boat.
     Mandy and I drove down to Woods Hole, parked the car, and caught the ferry over to the small town of Vineyard Haven. All the towns were small because the year round population was small. However, during the warm months the population swelled with tourists. It was well into autumn and the tourists were mostly gone. We were able to find a place at a reduced rate quickly. 
     After eating at a nearby restaurant we returned to our room, a very nice place right on the harbor. Through the large sliding glass doors we could lie in bed and watch the diving gulls among the bobbing sailboats. It wasn’t long however before Mandy got up and closed the curtains over the view. Amid the clean nautical décor, the sound of sea birds, and an occasional distant boat horn, we enjoyed each other until the water lapping against the nearby piers lulled us to sleep. If one word could be used to describe our relationship during that time, it would be harmonious. We were complete and attuned to the time and each other. At least that was certainly the only way that I could see it.
     The next morning after coffee, toast, and chowder we rented bicycles and set off across the island to visit Gay Head and its famous white clay cliffs. They were a good twenty miles away. At first we made good time along the little paved road. There was little traffic and the morning air was clean, crisp, and cool. However, as it began to warm up, Mandy started to flag and I had to push her. We were in the middle of nowhere and there was no alternative…...I thought. 
     Finally we arrived at the cliffs which were magnificent, but Mandy, red faced from the sun and exertion, was wet with sweat and not so enthralled. I was sweaty as well but I was more than used to such things. I had spent parts of my life drenched in it. But Mandy was the cool New England beauty who had never learned the ins and outs of real physical exertion. She was not, nor had ever been an athlete. That was the gulf between us that I should have been sensitive to but I dismissed it. I knew something was wrong when she failed to deliver up the artist’s eye at the clay cliffs. I was the kind that liked to keep moving when going somewhere. It was something that I had picked up under the marine pack and radio. Something that was ingrained. Consequently, my insensitivity to her condition killed all the previous harmony that we had established.
      We rested a while and ate a packed lunch before heading back at a slower pace. With the objective accomplished, it was easier for me to lend more consideration to the gentler nature of my mate, but it was too late. The damage had been done. The look of resentment remained on Mandy’s face until we finally got back and turned in our bicycles. I knew how she valued women’s standing in American society and how she wanted it to improve. So did I. I also knew that Mandy did many things with that in mind. Wrongly, I believed that if she thought that a sheer principle was enough to close the athletic gap between a male former athlete in his prime and a young New England female art student, she was being foolish. I assumed that she had no reason to feel resentful or defeated. As a result of that assumption, I treated the issue insensitively. If that was indeed the straw that brought the camel down, oh how I would pay for my ignorance. It had hurt her pride and caused more strain on a relationship that, unbeknownst  to me, was already troubling her. It would have cost me nothing to have given her more consideration and set a slower pace. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered in the long run.
     I was the fool that had been stamped “made in the USA” by the marines. I behaved poorly on that occasion, in part, because of that. Got to push on and all that. Mandy and I were good together but Mandy was in the bloom of full development while I had obviously become arrested in that far away American interest that had caused so much pain. That difference between us was one that was beginning to tell.
    
We settled back into our Boston life. Thanksgiving came and went and winter was fast approaching. The Garden of Eden that Mandy had enabled me to enjoy began to crack and for the first time I had to admit to myself that she was not as much mine as I had thought. To say that that scared me would be an understatement.
     One day when she returned from school she told me that one of her professors had invited her to his place for dinner and I absolutely couldn’t handle it. That further threatened her sense of independence and mucked up the situation even more. Later, through the years, I could imagine that she had concocted the dinner invitation as a test of my desire to control her. But right then, all of a sudden, it seemed that things had terribly changed. It had been so nice and uncomplicated but now Mandy and the events surrounding her were pushing all the wrong buttons of my psyche. I was beginning to unravel.
     For a while, I stomached it all as best I could, knowing that to lose her would be the end for me. When she decided to move out and share an apartment with a woman that we knew, I helped her move and get set up. While doing that one Saturday, my motorcycle was stolen in broad daylight. I still owed a year of payments on it, which I paid, yet I never saw the bike again.
     The loss of the cycle meant nothing to me beside the breakup of my life with Mandy. Kevin gave me a nice 10-speed bicycle and backpack to use and I never missed a beat on my transportation to work. I found a more direct and residential route to get me there and back.
     I only got to see Mandy a couple of times after that. She still acted like she enjoyed me, but I was sorely wounded and had a hard time just functioning. My drinking again began to get heavy and then Mandy wrecked and totaled her Subaru. Luckily she didn’t get hurt but I had always been scared of the way she drove sometimes. And now she had almost been injured because of it, she could have been killed. What was she doing without me?
     Things had changed so hard and fast that the devastation I experienced finally caused me to sometimes miss work.
     I had been invited to a holiday Christmas party by her parents before our break up. I had bought them a gift wrapped bottle of Chivas Regal but I couldn’t go. Mandy and I didn’t see each other any more and the party, with her parents viewing my demise in their crusty New England way, would have just been too painful. Instead I took the gift down the hall at work to Kevin and ask him if he would give it to his parents. I handed over the scotch and was suddenly paralyzed by the feeling that my insides had been hollowed out. For a moment I just couldn’t move. As I dumbly stood there, tears suddenly filled my eyes and I said the only thing that I could think of.
     “I don’t know what happened.”
     Kevin looked up from his desk and simply said, “Charlie, Mandy is an independent woman. No one has ever been able to tie her down. She will do as she chooses.”
     It was all I could do to nod, do an about face, and mechanically walk from the office, feeling broken beyond repair.
     Also before our split Mandy and I had planned a Christmas party at our house for the people I worked with. I tried to busy myself with that. Not a lot of people came, mostly just the people I knew well and had some social contact with. They didn’t stay long but many people were still there when Mandy made an appearance. Everyone well knew what had happened with our relationship and kindly stayed in their little circles. She and I spent a few quiet moments together in the hallway. We knelt down against the wall and had a conversation about how we were doing. Mandy was sympathetic and attentive to my poorly disguised attempts to keep my chin up. She was doing good and back in full possession of herself and seemed sorry that I had been hurt. But her demeanor said that she was sure of where she was and confident of the future. It was one of the hardest conversations that I would ever have. Harder than anything I had ever known. She left right after that and I knew that she was gone from me. Neither did I see nor hear from her again. Merry Christmas.
 
Life in Boston was again on the back side. As the winter blew by and the intense hurt subsided into an ever present dull ache, I found that I could not use the tricks of the war to make it go away.
     I felt like I could never get back to being at home in New England. Uselessly, I searched for an explanation. What was it that could bring on such destruction? Was it the Yankees and their absence of soul and depth? Or was it the naiveté of the dumb hillbilly who had thought surviving a war and a bad marriage had made him immune to heartbreak? The answer to that question, asked by one who could not develop, would never be known…….until he saw. Surviving was the best that I could hope for, and in order to do that I must know the lay of the land and be able to intuitively navigate it. I had nothing left inside to do it any other way and the hand that I had been dealt didn’t come with a draw. For me it was not going to change. There was only one place where I had been able to develop before my path had taken me out of the known to that which must be learned or suffered. Suffering, I  had done enough of. But once upon a time I had learned the Southern Appalachians enough to know how to survive their plain and loveless challenges. Getting there as soon as possible was the only way that I felt I could go on.
     From a friend I had known in college I learned that there was a job opening in the hospital psychiatric and alcoholism unit in my old hometown. I applied for it and scheduled an interview when they seemed interested. Taking a day off from work, I flew down and interviewed for the job. They offered it on the spot. I could start in a month which would give me enough time to give notice and get myself back down south.
    
It was with a lot of mixed feelings that I was leaving Boston. I had gotten over my ex-wife and learned to love again there. And I had developed an appreciation for the people and the countryside. But I was really scared that I would never get over Mandy if I stayed. Sorely crippled and feeling that I must leave in order to get better, I moved on. Facts would be that I would never would get over Mandy, just as I would never get over other things in my life. Sadly, I had never realized that some things just were and you couldn’t run from them.
     I purchased a little female beagle from a pet shop after Mandy left, hoping that the beagle would help some with my despair. I named her Jennie and she did help some as I became attached to her.
     Ted, my housemate, had a huge old Mercury that looked like a tank. He sold it to me for $50 so that I would have something to get me and my things down south. Also there was a black cat with twelve toes that he wanted me to take because he was never home to take care of it. I loaded the animals and my stuff into the old car and headed out to the 128 beltway. From there I picked up 95 south out of Massachusetts. Changing jobs and getting a place to live gave me a lot of things to do but the sense of loss was still there in my gut. With Mandy by my side I had danced with the Gods. Always I would love her.
                                                                 
 
The shrieks of the arrogant jay again pierced the Sunday morning air calling me up from my stupor. My back hurt and at first I thought that I must have fallen asleep and dreamed while sitting hunched over on that old porch. That was only until I again saw her photograph looking up at me from the newsprint that laid at my feet.. For all that time she had been gone from me. Now she was just gone. Had I actually lived all that time without the known pain of her absence, only to now feel that it was yesterday that I loved her? I was old but I was not dumb and I knew that she had always been there in me, however silent and remote the relationship. Yet the knot in my gut and the intensity of the recall still surprised me. I had often wondered about where she might be and what she might be doing, but only in flights of fancy. Or while nodding off by the wood stove after visiting the graveyard where my wife and child were buried. The separation from them had hurt fearsome. But now they were only up on the ridge and easy to visit and stay in touch with. No surprises there. I expected that it would always be so. But Mandy was now also gone, like them, and I knew nothing of how it might be. Only that the love I once had with her could not grow cold and die. I might not have recognized it for many of these past decades, but despite the ones that I had buried and the revisits that I had made, that old glowing ember where Mandy and I had crossed proved that some things will be. And damned be any attempts to pretend otherwise.
     I grabbed the section of the newspaper with Mandy’s picture in it, shuffled into my shack, and settled down in an old rocker. Opening the door of my Buck stove, I deliberately wadded up each sheet of newspaper, except the one with Mandy’s picture, and mashed them low down in the stove. Neatly, I stacked the kindling over the pile of paper, closed the door, and rolled the remaining sheet tightly into a suitable starting torch. Gently, I laid it atop the stove. That evening, when the chill had returned and the jays had disappeared, Mandy and I would set our evening fire.
 
 
 

Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com

Ragazine  November 2017
http://ragazine.cc/2017/11/books-for-november/
 
Scarlet Leaf Review November 15, 2017
https://www.scarletleafreview.com/nonfiction2/carol-smallwood-interview-of-judith-skillman
 
Mom Egg Review November 13, 2017
http://momeggreview.com/2017/11/13/prisms-particles-and-refractions-by-carol-smallwood/

Carol Smallwood’s new collection, Prisms Particles, and Refractions, is at once playful and serious. Her work in this volume ranges from extremely concise poems such as “On Days of Slow Rain” where the speaker becomes “a child again / longing to read / darkened tree bark/like Braille” (53) to the four-page oeuvre written in journal form, “A Late Summer Diary.” The fact that these two poems are neighbors makes the transition between short and long more emphatic, and creates echoes and resonances.
 
As Smallwood deftly moves through a variety of content and subject matter, the reader gets a sense of an unpredictable world, despite the anchor of a wealth of scientific evidence to the contrary. Facts are posited, yet not accepted as givens. For instance, in “We See,” the persona examines exactly how we do see and absorb light, and questions knowledge imparted during college years. Here, the title becomes the first line: “We See / with rods and cones I learned / in college—it may not be true/today…” (13). As this poem deepens, mirrors, faces, and sacrifice come into play, as well as the automatic adjustment made by the retina from upside down to right side up. This piece is emblematic of Smallwood’s gift—focused examinations that lead to “aha” moments for both writer and reader.
 
The poems in this book have been published in many journals. Clearly the art of poetry is one Ms. Smallwood has lived and learned. Her forms range from cinquain to villanelle to sestina; she switches from formal to free verse with ease. The myriad references and allusions in these poems draw from philosophy, psychology, physics, metaphysics, history, and literature.
 
“A Prufrock Measurement” (74) employs playfulness and formal rhyme in order to merge two vastly different subjects—contemporary fast food proliferation with the persona of Eliot’s Prufrock. This willingness to draw from disparate sources creates a prismatic effect: varied and brilliant. In the introduction, Smallwood states her intention to present poems “aimed at capturing…aspects of light…and light as metaphor.” It is this reviewer’s sense that she has succeeded.
 
Prisms Particles, and Refractions
by Carol Smallwood
Finishing Line Press, 2017, $18.99 [paper] ISNB 978-1635342338
85 pp.
 
Judith Skillman’s recent book is Kafka’s Shadow, Deerbrook Editions. Her work has appeared in LitMag, Shenandoah, Zyzzyva, FIELD, and elsewhere. Awards include an Eric Mathieu King Fund grant from the Academy of American Poets. She is a faculty member at the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, Washington. Visit www.judithskillman.com
 
​

​     Did you ever wonder why all those tv commercials are reduced to slogans of just three to five words? Think about it. You see them all the time on tv, McDonald’s ‘I’m lovin it,’  Arby's ‘We have the meats,’ and the classic that started it all Wendy’s memorable ‘Where’s the beef?’’ Fast food, fast commercials.
     But it’s not just fast food companies that use them. Car manufacturers especially rely on them, ‘Let’s go places,’ and ‘Zoom, Zoom, Zoom,’ You can’t get any simpler than zoom, zoom, zoom, one word three times. Genius. But what is really genius today is that car commercials mix politics into their slogans like  ‘Empower the Drive.’  If we can empower women, then by God we can empower drivers too. And don’t forget “Driving Matters.’ Duh where’d the heck that one come from? Out of left field? Finally did you ever notice that car slogans always attach themselves to the upcoming holiday season. So at Christmas time we get, ‘A December to Remember,’ a rhyming slogan. That’s good.  Rhymes are good. For as we all know, “rhymes bind the mind from the ridiculous to the sublime.” *
    Which brings us up to an HNL, a Hole Nother Level, those rhyming catchy jingles like ‘Nationwide is on your side.’ A masterpiece of commercial musical composition if there ever was one. Five words, a rhyme, and a catchy tune all rolled into one nonstop song that plays over and over again on the broken record player of your mind so that you can’t stop singing or humming that stupid song all day long.
    Now sometimes slogans exceed the five word limit like, ‘Better ingredients, better pizza, Papa John’s.’’ Six words but three phrases. Still not a good idea. Pushing the envelope. Gets one to thinking. Better ingredients? Better ingredients than what? Last week’s, last year’s, or the other guy’s? And who in the hell is the other guy and what ingredients did he use?  Too many words kills a commercial. 
    That’s why politicians also use three word campaign slogans.They don’t want the voters to stop and think. Heaven forbid! Think of Obama’s slogans. Remember this man is a Harvard graduate and a lawyer. ‘Yes We Can,’ and ‘Hope and Change.’ The voters swallowed those sugar coated concoctions hook, line, and sinker. No wonder he’s the smartest man in America.
    Well the list of slogans could go on and on and by now I’m sure you the reader are stopping to see how many you can come up with. But you can bet your sweet bippy, that is if you still have one. Don’t know what a bippy is? Well look it up. That’s what the internet is for. Just remember that it’s another four word phrase. Anyway you can bet your sweet bippy that nothing will change. That’s the way it always has been and the way it always will be ‘world without end amen.’ So really there’s no reason at all to wonder about why three to five word slogans are used. It’s simple. Simple like a commercial. The answer has always been with us. That great wit of a man H. L. Mencken gave it to us many years ago when he so brilliantly proclaimed, “No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.” And if that’s too long of a sentence for you to comprehend or understand just remember these four little words, that’s right four, four words, ‘keep it simple stupid.’ KISS if you can’t  remember that. And above all else let us never forget, ‘All Slogans Matter.’
 
*This is not a quote from a great writer, poet, or philosopher. I made it up and because it sounds so profound I thought it deserved its own footnote.
 
 
 

​ISBN: 978-0-9985463-8-4 LCCN:
FIRST EDITION
Published by Ravenna Press (ravennapress.com)
 
Reviewer: Jim Meirose (www.jimmeirose.com)
 
This book of poems by Jane Rosenberg LaForge is structured around the Greek myth of Daphne, the naiad. You may choose to “cheat” and look over the myth if you don’t already know about it before reading this book, or you may go in “cold” (my situation).  Immediately upon starting into the book, I found the imagery absolutely transporting.  Right from the start I was given a strong sense of Ms. LaForge’s words spinning their imagery around cascading truths summoned by the winding and circling imagery. The writing is “punchy” and as close to flawless as I have seen. It is very earthy and solid as opposed to the overly “precious” surface veneer of most of the poetry that I have seen. Much like fiction will do, it is telling a story; and not just rehashing the Daphne myth, though that can be followed down throughout. There are many other stories being concurrently told here, and in a way that reveals Ms. LaForge to be an extraordinary talent. The writing is variegated and multilayered, demanding multiple readings to get to the core. It is complex yet loose and inviting, with no “klinkers” present to throw the reader off the rails, as are found in the work of less talented, disciplined, and experienced poets.
 
For example: the following is bare bones but typically vivid:
“Because if a man hollers to your dog and your dog goes running, then the man comes up to your porch and your women greet him; and then the man comes into your home and sits at your table and helps himself to your meat, bread, and beverages; then soon he is in your bedroom, which has become a cafeteria for his surfeit. My mother supposedly knew about…”
 
Words conjured by the following: this reveals the flow and flux of life:
“…and which would exude neither lead nor blood in the final analysis, but a paste, like resin, with which to bind the fossil record…”
 
Word-gasps like this appear throughout, delivering precise incontrovertible truths:
“…welfare families looking for a temporary symbol of life eternal in a desert made of their own choices...”
 
The universe is alive, alive as this passage:
“The myth I have chosen to explain myself rests in marble and oil: One incontrovertible at its final arrival, the other capable of separation into terraces, an archaeological rendering of lime and flavor.”
 
Shudderingly real and precise word-bursts, as:
“…the blood spot in an egg that the rabbis cut away; if no human sees it then it does not occur…”
 
I can’t find adequate words for this next, but in one line it says what most take reams to explain:
“A tree is not a dead thing, but slowed, decelerated, as if an inmate of time, a particular date. September was my birthday, and the arrangements of the room were all about escape…”
 
This reflects Flannery O’Connor’s belief in the fallen nature of mankind, put more precisely:
“…the tendency toward untidy dissolution we are all born with…
 
And lastly: the theme of continual transformation central to this book is described as:
“But I had moved on to another god or perhaps just another demi-drama and I was element, no longer apostle, having been charred, and made hollow.”
 

​Interviewer Carol Smallwood’s recent poetry collections include: In Hubble’s Shadow (Shanti Arts, 2017); (Prisms, Particles, and Refractions Finishing Line Press, 2017).

​Shanti Arts, 2017, Brunswick, Maine: 98 pages,  $14.95, paperback
https://www.amazon.com/Hubbles-Shadow-Carol-Smallwood/dp/1941830447/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1491928883&sr=1-2&keywords=carol+smallwood
 
     The early 90s were exciting and troubling times—the Berlin wall came down, and the Iraq War began. A Gen Xer, this was the backdrop for my first year of college. When the Hubble Telescope launched into space in early 1990, sending us brilliant images of a world we had heretofore only imagined, it surprised and delighted us, showing us just how small we were. For me, these bright photographs helped to offset the images of the loss of the Challenger, a loss many in my generation still remember as one of our first shared tragedies. In Hubble’s Shadow, a collection of poems by Carol Smallwood, evoked this rush of memories for this reader, simply with its title.
     These memories were not the only ones that flooded my senses as I read Smallwood’s poetry. I delighted in scenes seemingly inspired from my own rural upbringing—from an exploration of spring’s arrival in the changing landscape of a dirt road in the brief “An Ode to Mud,” or the remembrance of summer’s bounty in the even briefer “The Sugar Beet Field.” These poems delight the senses and inspire wonder and laughter. But, darker images reside here, too. Faithless friends and partners in “Dreams of Flying Sestina,” and health concerns in “Live with It” and “Kitty Doesn’t Explore” rear their heads, weaving their way into this tapestry of a life lived in contemplation of our world’s complexity, whether underfoot, overhead, or right in front of us.
 
Taken as a whole, this collection reflects the full round of life, with all of its questions, beauty, and pain. This volume is accessible to all readers, no matter their knowledge of poetry and poetic devices. Although this collection includes several longer-form works, the majority pull you in with their brevity and knock you out with their depth of feeling and the poet’s ability to bring the reader right to the heart of the story. This collection meets the reader where they are, with just enough detail to inspire the wonder with which the author so clearly perceives the world and her place in it. Or, as Smallwood writes so eloquently in the last line of “Wind in Trees”—“the story lies with the interpreter.”
 
Jennifer L. Dean, Dean of University Libraries and Instructional Technology, Instructional Design Studio, University of Detroit Mercy Libraries
 

​Lois Greene Stone, writer and poet, has been syndicated worldwide. Poetry and personal essays have been included in hard & softcover book anthologies.  Collections of her personal items/ photos/ memorabilia are in major museums including twelve different divisions of The Smithsonian.

Downsize.  Change.  Simple words sometimes remind us that our passage through time has changed from ‘endless’ to closer to ending.  Our adult lives were shaped by observation and quiet commentary from others. Reflection, yet always noticing a ‘new’ in familiar, is part of the present.
            As sun streams into my personal office, in what once had been my daughter’s growing-up bedroom, I’ve noticed that my oak desk drawers no longer match the plastic laminate top.  The real wood slowly faded its color in streaks of sun-bleached patterns; the effect has a modern art appearance.
            Cardboard boxes, that once contained shoes, currently store unsorted photographs my widowed mother had once given me to assemble and hand down to the next generation; stacked on my desk, the boxes look like steps leading to nowhere.  My memory flashes a futuristic painting I had to learn for an Art History class: Nude Descending a Staircase.  As if taking a test, I scribbled Marcel Duchamp’s name on a scrap-paper pad, then added ‘lines, angles, experience going down a flight of stairs’.  I marvel a moment at the human brain and its ability to store, then process, information it received decades ago.
            Outside the double-hung window with its plastic partitions to form window panes, only mounds of snow seem visible.   My calendar changes the year.  This seems to be a good time, without birds chirping or the need-to-go-outdoors distraction, to finally force myself to pull down the uppermost cardboard box, descend its stairs-shape, and begin to clump that collection into distant past, past, more current.  The brand name, of the pair of shoes once nestled inside amid thin tissue paper, assaults my eyes. I pull several yellow two-ply nasal tissues from the holder propped near a brass desk lamp, and try to cover the side of the box’s shoe logo. The tissues drift down and clump helplessly.
            The house is quiet; I am alone.  I glance again outside the window glass as a few flakes of snow tap and briefly cling to a pane, then I look at the first black and white photograph.  My maternal grandmother, in a proper dark suit and hat, carrying white gloves, is standing at the opposite end of a high desk.  My short-stature grandfather, in 1917, is being sworn in as an American citizen.  The pin stripes on his suit look narrow next to the thick stripes on our country’s flag that was spread open and tacked to a wall as if it were a huge picture.  The stars are fewer than our current flag.  ‘Mama had been secreted out of Russia by horse-drawn cart as a 16 year old girl, settled in New York City, sent for her fiancé who came in steerage, and they were married in New York. Papa is a photographer’.  My mother had affixed this data on the 5x7 photo’s back.  The swearing-in as citizens event, even to my mother, had less importance than her sentences about her parents’ courage plus their wish to be part of America’s people.  The photograph concealed their traveling in steerage, having to learn to speak English, living in a walk-up tiny apartment with one bathroom for all tenants on the floor.  My mother’s handwritten note had me think about her parents as refugees, also once young with ‘endless’ life ahead.
            I picked up the second photo lying in my cardboard box.  My grandpa was on a stage with Eleanor Roosevelt; she was at a podium delivering a speech.  An on-stage sign read “Learn the 3 R’s of To-day Registration-Reconversion-Reconstruction Women Make History on October Registration Days”  My grandpa had much less hair than in 1917, so I quickly turned the photo over to see if, perhaps, someone had scrawled the date but no one had.
            Negatives.  In our present digital camera time, there are no negatives to slip into envelopes we have to date so if/when we want a copy of an old picture, we slide the negative from its sleeve and give to a developer.  Negatives were the actual size of the photo back in the early 20th century.  A brown envelope had preserved a collection of 5x7 black and white negatives.  No developer today would even have the equipment to make copies from any.  My boxes of 35mm slides, capturing my children’s growing years, are obsolete and no projectors are being manufactured anymore.  I put the negatives in the bottom of the shoe box.
            When I was teaching English Composition at a local college, I found myself so absorbed in each student’s words that I spent way too much time reading/grading individual essays.  I was doing the same with these old pictures.  Realizing that just one box would take hours, I did the ‘easier’ thing, what I couldn’t do with students’ essays: I put the cover back on the box for a ‘someday’ pretending that the future years have longer lengths.
            Going downstairs, I wondered if that cubist painter, studied in my Art History class, would have captured more than the lines and angles of my legs and arms in a ‘z’ shape just like my staggered cardboard boxes of photos appear?  What might he have drawn had he seen the boxes on my desk?  I’m superimposing people and cardboard storage in my head; perhaps that would be painted. 
            Downsize.  Quite impossible when choices have to be made.  Easy to toss out the trash or today’s newspaper, but tangible pieces of our lives require consideration even if there’s no monetary value.  How much easier it’d be to put an old leather baby shoe into the garbage.... or would it?  Why was it saved for decades in the first place?
            I can alter my daughter’s growing-up space into my personal office room because furniture and square footage don’t have handwritten notes affixed.  However, I was shaped by observation and quiet commentary by so many faces in black and white photos, I can’t consign them to oblivion
 
 PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED - 2009 The Jewish Press 

Draped by a neighbor’s front door is a pretty ornamental flag with a pattern of flowers and potted plants. The owner changes it seasonally.  But my mind flashes to the Service Stars from my childhood: red background, gold rectangle center, a blue star centered and a blue ‘v’ in the gold rectangle.  I think there were gold fringes on the bottom.  Not very large, I hung these banners on my bedroom window as it was in the front of our house; anyone passing on the street knew that we had family members serving in the World War II armed forces.  If a gold star was on anyone’s banner, it meant someone in that family had been killed in action.
With 25-cents allowance money, I bought tiny war-stamps and pasted each carefully into a special album; when I had 75 collected, I could actually get a $25 War Savings Bond!  Since posters seemed to be affixed to many-many walls proclaiming ‘Buy Victory Bonds’, I felt patriotic and grinned when looking at one as I, too, was part of the Bond drive.
My mother got ration stamps; these were not fun nor collectibles.  Monthly there were 48 blue ones for canned goods, and 64 red ones for perishables.  I don’t know why she kept calm when I used an entire month’s worth of sugar rationing attempting to make my own marshmallows, failing to read the directions, and tossing out the mess!  
I never thought about gas being rationed because there were busses and the Long Island Railroad near by, but some relatives on the South Shore of Long Island said they were only allotted three gallons of gasoline each week.  Sounded okay to me.
We ate a lot of what my mother home-canned.  Seemed like a strange term because she was using a jar and not a tin can.  Many vegetables came from our Victory Garden in the backyard, and I hadn’t realized that meat was in short supply as I much preferred macaroni anyway.  
I created my own coloring books.  Mostly, the ones for sale, were “America at War”, or “Flying for Victory”.  Since I cut out my self-designed paper dolls and fashioned their clothes, drawing copy and pictures for a coloring book was pleasant, creative, easy for me.
Could I collect more scrap metal than my sisters?  I crushed each empty tin can with my shoes to make it flat.  If, on the street, I saw discarded foil from a cigarette, I picked it up and added it to my ‘save’ pile.  My mother drained all the grease from cooked chickens, and such, and put that into glass jars to donate to the ‘war effort’.  Grease was too disgusting for me.
Some mothers on our street were Rosie the Riveters, actually wore slacks, and worked with fire-torches in steelworks.  Imagine that!  My mother, in her snood covering her hair, and her Swirl wrap dress, was a housewife.
“Oklahoma” opened on Broadway in 1943 and was still very popular by 1945; then came “Carousel” at the Majestic Theatre.  Musicals were a wonderful escape from reality, and I was completely engrossed with the singing and dancing even if I didn’t quite understand the social message.  Sure, for 30-cents I could see a double-feature movie, cartoons, and a Newsreel, but too many films were about war.
Writing V-Mail and receiving letters back from uncles overseas also was another adventure.  It didn’t bother me that someone actually read my mail, or theirs, and deleted portions with heavy black lines thinking something being written was harmful to our country, I liked the idea that my words had enough impact to have someone take the time to cover up what seemed suspicious.  I barely knew what ‘suspicious’ was.
The war ended; my parents cried with happiness.  I shrugged my shoulders because I didn’t understand politics or such anyway.  What I did understand was my 1945 outfits had skirts with too much fabric, went to mid-calf, and was all because the textile people suddenly had material again.  The ladies who seemed to like actually find working outside the house and getting a paycheck were told to go back to their houses as the men would be home to replace them.  Some were angry; I didn’t understand that either.
President Truman proclaimed a ‘day’ set aside each year to honor mothers of America, and Mother’s Day was to begin on May 13, 1945.  I bought a gardenia for my mother, yet still had a penny left for my sugar-dots affixed to paper that I so loved to eat. 
I took the banners off my window panes; my uncles were coming home and the stars had stayed blue.  But, at that age, I’d thought a gold star was like my piano teacher’s on my sheet music and never did associate it with anything else.
We don’t have Service Star flags in our 21st Century, but wars continue, history repeats itself, terrorism hit America in 9-11, and freedom to enter schools or cross the bridge into Canada with ease is gone.  On doors, some hang decorative flags and change each with the seasons; the flags are pretty to look at and not associated with anything except an art form.  
Our troops today, in  places we rarely studied in history classes years ago, feel anxiety not too different from those who donned uniforms in each war.  What if they were honored by silk rectangles affixed to windows facing streets?  Think neighbors might pause and nod to other neighbors a little more often?


Previously published:
©2009 The Jewish Press (7/3/2009 issue)
reprinted July/August 2010 Over the Back Fence
reprinted July 2011 Senior Beacon