Breath & Shadow Homepage

My Dad Saves Me by Gary Blume

It’s the early sixties

On an island smack

In the middle of

The Mississippi

And Minneapolis

Where no sandy

Beached island

Belongs

Click here to read this poem

Who Dresses You? by Amy Krout-horn

Gabriel lifted his glass, offered a birthday toast, and leaned closer to kiss me, whispering something in my ear that was as dirty as his martini. The innuendo raised my eye brows and the corners of my mouth, and as the server returned, my blush lingered.

"It looks like the two of you are having a good time in the Keys," she teased.

Under the table, Gabriel ran a finger beneath the hem of my skirt, painting my face a deeper shade of crimson. He smiled at the amused waitress and replied, "Yes, we're having quite a good time."

Click here to read this creative non-fiction piece

A Stab At Angels, For M By Nancy Scott

I play your CDs, wandering
among your wanting
drugs and love and God
and knees that worked
and effortless thinness
and choreless money
and no more heart caths.

Click here to read Nancy’s poems

BOTHERED AND BEWILDERED by Thomas Gagnon

As each day's beat beneath me subsides,
it requires a bell-pull at my brain
to schedule for tomorrow's June day
sense with dashes of sensibility,
each day no longer a medieval cathedral
buttressed by my engaged and engaging
students of Romantic and modern music history.

Click here to read this poem

Garden Blend Buck Stops by Karen S. Kane

April, 1973. The summer-like early night seemed breathless and clammy, truly, the last legs of that day, as Claudine Maine pulled the diner door open, stepped out. Break time.

She grasped her waitress cap/hairnet with one hand, tussling free long thick black waves at the sides of her face, while her other hand snatched a scrap paper sign loosed from the glass as she'd passed. “New Management” read red crayon letters. Tape gave up, it'd been there a month. She crumpled the paper, tossed it in the trash can beside her, then sat on the curb of the entryway walk.

Click here to read this novel excerpt

Cement By Esté Yarmosh

I wanted a child,

But she didn’t come.

You have a lovely little girl here.

They didn’t tell me you’d be deaf and

Fucked up.

God didn’t say so either.

In ancient Greece,

I would have had you

Exposed, as Oedipus was --

Stranded in an open place,

So Nature would swallow you.

Click here to read this poem

Spring Harvest, Haiku by Akua Lezli Hope

The Mennonite boys came

with a mother, this time. Her gold

disk earrings molten in cold spring.

Dusk hovering long enough

to gather spent milkweed.

Frank, who will study in Utah

gets it and gathers fistfuls of fluff

quizzes me about seeds

and cooking, while the brothers

dark and light, thick and thin

tug spent stalks from rain-softened ground

filling my bags.

Click here to read Akua’s poems

Censorship: Plato vs. Socrates by Louis B. Shalako

It was Margaret Atwood, Canada’s best-known author, who said in an interview with TVO’s Allen Gregg; “Most letters to the editor are written by retarded people, because they don’t have to worry about losing their jobs.”

This was broadcast and repeated earlier this year.

Over the last year there have been one or two columns in the local daily paper where the writers stated, “We have the right to offend one another.”

In Ray Bradbury’s ‘Fahrenheit 451,’ the basic premise of the story is that the government was burning books. All books. Bradbury’s brilliant twist on an old plot was that the government wasn’t totalitarian. The people themselves had demanded it, because they didn’t like reading stuff that upset them.

Click here to read this essay

Damaged Goods by AJ Pearson-VanderBroek

The way they talk – seems to say – she’s damaged goods—of course she’s on sale – because I’m pretty –I’m considerate – I’m a size 0 – and if I had long hair – and less hardware – I’d be a ten – but a couple pieces of molded plastic – a few scars – and suddenly – the only reason I’m not a relentless uncompromising bitch – is because I’m disabled

Click here to read this poem

Feasting by Diane Hoover Bechtler

The anesthesiologist was long gone, slipping others into dreamless night, which was a shame. I wanted to thank her for the easy drift. Where others had knocked me out cold, she made good on her promise to ease me under. The drugs had changed and were much kinder now. I was soon awake and clear-headed. Or so I thought.

Someone said, “Is her mouth drooping?”

Click here to read this essay

Again, Explainations, and Responses by Kathleen Grieger

Bandages off, I’m allowed
to sit up. I turn one way, seeing no
difference. Inspecting the other,
I gaze into the mirror
Right side curving softly,
curls cover my shoulder
Left side, shaved and stapled

Click here to read Kathleen’s poems

Legislative Awareness Day by Erika Jahneke

Ned Corner(R-IN) liked to think of himself as a Fair Man. He pictured that sentence in a history book, or in his eulogy.

”Kelly!” Corner yelled for his smartest page. “I need you to do some research for me.”

“Sir?”

Kelly was prompt, reliable, female, and too serious to have dirty thoughts about. In short, she was the perfect staffer for the post-Foley era. This was a good thing, because whether or not Corner was a fair man, he was a lazy one, called Cutting Corner by his generous House colleagues.

Click here to read this short story

Goose Gobbles Joy, Webs and Razors by Dorothy Baker

The dream drums,

The wind goose comes

The wire tightens

Winter’s hold.

A war blots out the sun.

Click here to read Dorothy’s poems

Where Have All The Ducks Gone? By Katy Wimhurst

As she often did these days, Louise walked alone into the urban park, wandering down a wide avenue lined with lime trees. It was raining a little, but sunlight penetrated through gaps in the clouds, giving the park an odd, luminescent glow. The light seemed alien to Louise, like it wasn't real, like it'd somehow been artificially painted onto the gloomy air. She turned left down a narrow pathway and her attention was drawn to a couple standing in the shadows under an oak tree, engrossed in a kiss. She stopped and stared at them, then bit down on her lip and hurried on.

Click here to read this short story

Lost by Sergio Ortiz

There is no simple way

of getting misplaced

in the city: too many signs,

landmarks, and directions.

I'd run, no walk, to be lost

Click here to read this poem

Take My Legs. Please. by Rosalie McClung

What’s the best way to kill yourself? Let’s see. There’s strangulation. I could hang myself with an old pair of pantyhose from the tree in the front yard. But that’s a bit too public. Everybody driving by could see me wrangle and rot. And then any loose dog might be tempted to nibble my carcass.

Forcing me to suffer through eighties country music might do the trick. That twang serves up a deadly chord. Gagging over a swallow of caviar might offer a terminal end.

Click here to read this essay

Volume 6 Number 4; Fall 2009

Interdimensions by Todd Hanks

I discarded my sanity like
a dream from the night before.
Slime-topped minutes dripped
from a sundial.
Delusion was a man who
blinded me with jellyfish hands...

Click here to read this poem

On Reading Books by Bill Turley

When I consider my lifetime of reading, I know I must look at it through a skewed lens due to my particular mix of learning disabilities. My Cerebral Palsy prevents me from writing legibly, while ADD affects my reading speed and comprehension. It is, however, a reading life worth examining.

Click here to read this essay

Erythromycin by Nicole Kuppers

The crickets outside
The window were gone
And when I heard the sound
Of the hissing in my ears
I imagined 15 doctors
Escorting me to hell
And thought that I would
Never hear a sound again

Click here to read this poem

Embers to Ashes by Jennifer Gifford

I was reading the obituary page the day I met my husband. It’s a little odd, I’ll admit. Morbid curiosity I guess. My future husband, a tax specialist with eye-lashes most women would die for, joked that the obits were a great way to find a new job. Glancing over my shoulder, sipping from his medium hazelnut, he said, “Hey, I hear there’s a new opening in the shipping department at Sears…”

Click here to read this short story

Beach Song, Night by Megan Kelly

Beach chair sits firm at the water's edge
Gulls swoop and sigh, slicing the moisture
bloated air
Heightened scents of sand, salt and sunscreen…

Click here to read these poems

Red Kowalski’s Bloody Strange Day by Adam Pick

It was at 14:45 precisely, on a suitably wet, windy and forlorn Tuesday that Red Kowalski became aware that his attempt to get through the day unscathed had failed catastrophically. His life wasn’t great in general. He was a social worker and lived in a horrid place. Considering this was meant to be a “luxury apartment,” the view wasn’t so great, nor the apartment that luxurious. Let’s face it--his landlord was so bloody devious, that if the apartment had developed a leaky roof in the bathroom prior to his moving in, it would have been advertised as having been fitted with a power shower.

Click here to read this short story

Lie Down Spasticus by P.A. Levy

There's a tensile edge to us;
alloy lightweight
extra strong accessories to our limbs that would
otherwise collapse with intermittent jestful ease, to leave us looking drunk and disorderly…

Click here to read this poem

What I Learned Last Night by Jeanette Beal

I saw the touring cast version of Rent at the Colonial in Boston last night. It was a birthday gift to me from my lovely partner. We were 3rd row, center and I swear I felt some Anthony Rapp spit hit my forehead. He was hamming it up for the audience, while Adam Pascal was kind of droopy.

As I sat in the third row, attired in work clothes and fiddling with my hesitant pup, I couldn't help but reflect on the 19 year old girl who sat 3rd row in a velvet dress in the Neiderlander with friends on either side, freshly inundated into her first semester of college and besotted with New York City.

Click here to read this essay

Insomnia by Azure R Angelus

This faulty rhythm cycles through my body
I have staggered with it always
When I was an unnumbered child
It was the tick-tock of the clock
That reminded me with each notch of noise
How awake I was through passing increments…

Click here to read this poem

Volume 6, Number 2; Spring 2009

A pot on the burner
you forgot about and left
on medium heat
simmering still not boiling
is less dangerous
than the boiling kettle
whistling through the hallways
of a bad dream...

I am not on fire. Not on fire. I have to convince myself not to let my arms jerk open to swing where they might catch the air. Every part of me wants to, every part of me hurts. Every singular molecule of my being is radiating with misery. I used to be proud that I did this every day. That I let myself breathe in and out the intolerable--but always shockingly bearable crushing of physical hurt and that panicked starvation for relief. It was never coming, and the pain was undoubtedly never ending. But it had ended--and if not ended had at least become livable--manageable and beautifully noiseless in its daily existence in my life.

On a fresh, dewy day in May, where the woods of Maine approach the coast, I stood in the riding ring at Bush Brook Stable, home of Ever After Mustang Rescue, feeling like an idiot while I waved around a carrot. I was trying to get the dang horse to let me pat his neck. Patting, so normal for ninety-eight percent of horses, was utterly out of the question for Good as Gold. He nearly jumped out of his horsey skin the first time I made a light slapping noise on his neck. His fear was large, as was mine, although for completely different reasons. Or so I thought at the time.

Speak from your heart,
my father is listening
his silver instruments
as sensitive
as a lover’s ear--
Open, be opened,
like a bride,
to his most tender touch.

Every day in elementary school, an aide follows me around, including into the bathroom. It's the epic humiliation: having an adult go into the bathroom with you. It doesn't matter whether or not the other kids know about it. I know it, and it makes me feel ashamed that I can't even go to the bathroom by myself.

It's not even that I can't use the toilet alone or have trouble getting on and off the seat. I wear spandex pants every day because I can't do zippers or buttons. My only consolation is that spandex pants are somewhat popular, though most of my classmates wear jeans.

Trinity stood behind Peyton with her arms around her waist as Peyton faced herself in the mirror for the first time since her left breast had been removed.

"It's not so bad, right?" Trinity nuzzled Peyton's shoulder blade which was level with the top of her head.

"Not PHIL Spector, THE Spectre. The Grim Reaper, the Angel of Death. And it's already got it's big old jack-booted foot wedged in my door..." Peyton's mouth was a grim line. She never cried, not even after the surgery.

On a moonlit walk through the cemetery
One is never alone
No more can the weary dead rest in peace
With all this damn racket
Boy-racers zooming past, broken bottles
Clanging on the fence
Drunkards and revelers, stumbling through
Shortcut to the pub...

It was just a friendly hug

and yet...

her arms, around me, were warm as a sunbeam

and nearly as soft.

It was the sort of hug that you can still feel

even after it's gone

for half an hour;

a tingling tickling across your back,

seeping into those old wounds

where you once had wings.

The nerves start the week before. This was a bad idea. What am I thinking of, putting myself up in front of people? Agreeing to talk to people, when my social anxiety's been so bad for years that my neighbors are beginning to wonder if I'm a vampire, if I ever come out of the house. Maybe if I stay huddled up in bed, the curtains drawn, no one will remember that I'm supposed to be signing books tomorrow. Maybe we can all forget the whole thing and go back to how we were.

The jewelry I knew

to remove in advance. The crutches

too reactive to enter. Better to bring

the stretcher out here. I agree, allow

myself to be shifted into position, anchored

so that my head is caged. I agree, though

nurses and elderly patients stroll by, barely

blink at my exposure...

The dance floor is alive, and I am dazed. The music is loud enough to block out the subtle sounds that usually give shape to space, turning everyone into an amorphous and shifting landscape doused in bad eighties pop music. "This is great!" my three friends say, trying to describe the aged and the eccentric, the hip young graduate students next to the vintage novelists. We are undergraduates at a large industry conference for writers, and we have been waiting all week to attend this party, speculating what might happen when the bitter rejected writers and the overworked and jaded publishers at this conference consume a few drinks. We were hoping for a brawl to break out over the role of reader response theory in graduate schools. What we find instead is the atmosphere of a high school dance, with the enhancement of booze and a diverse crowd.

The moon's romantic glow

Illuminates the lake's ripples ceaselessly

Ebbing at the hour of no sin...

Political correctness has swept the field of medicine from dermatology to pediatrics, and certainly psychiatry has had its share of terminology-laundering. As a mental patient, I face the PC question on a daily basis: "Loony-bin," "funny farm," and "nut case" are out, for obvious reasons, but some very, very sensitive people, with an eye for anything offensive, have declared that "mental patient" and "mentally ill" are out as well; the words are ugly and shameful. These folks think they're doing us a favor by inventing another, more pleasant word for what we really are: "Consumers."

The fiddler rosins up his bow,

long fingers curl around a block of blood

He plays a scale upon my nerves.

Always rising, never falling.

Fingering first here, then there...

A Note From My Mother, Waiting For Word: On My Mother's Heart Attack by Stephanie De Haven

Your birth was the birth of an idea born squirming

and red--but silent--with hair like blood in water and brass

attitudes. My sweet child, who I pushed into this world wet and

precious--my red pearl--I know you. You will grow into a squirming

toddler, a red child, and finally, a silent adolescent.

In the dark of night

she heard

Soul speak

"You are a prophet."

Again, it spoke,

"You are a poet,

gold to the world.

I board the #6 bus in Minneapolis' Dinkytown neighborhood heading for the Uptown district. Once there, my plan is to make the short walk to DreamHaven Books to drop off some fliers for my upcoming reading. Instead of taking my usual spot at the front of the bus, I decide to head for the back bench. I know the bus driver: He's good about announcing the stops into the microphone, his clear baritone voice easy to understand through the dodgy lowest-bidder sound system that Metro Transit favors.

Sometimes I want to sit away from the handicapped and senior citizen seats, and I've ridden this route so many times I can tell where I am by the turns and dips and bumps. I know I won't miss my stop at Uptown Station. I settle into the back corner and lean my head against the cool glass.

This is a stunning, moving film. There are no wasted images, no extraneous words. Each frame, each spoken phrase has a powerful impact. Yet the real beauty of it is that its message and tone feel accessible and uplifting throughout. Karina Epperlein's award winning documentary, "Phoenix Dance," is a visual and spiritual journey--a reconnection with a childlike curiosity and trust.

You flipped me off the first time we met.

You, laughing and maniacal from behind your windshield, Mary
clinging to the door, begging you not to drive home.

Fucking asshole, I thought.

You drove home.

You never did remember that night-or admit to remembering it.

Eyes closed, I listen as patches of my psychiatrist's words filter through the haze. "...Extremely treatment resistant. I think we should consider shock therapy."

I study the diplomas dotting the wall as he explains the procedure. Messily scribbled crayon masterpieces break the monotony of academic certificates.

"I like you Dr. E," one child raves in lime green writing. I would like him a lot better if he weren't talking about screwing with my brain.

Is this a poem?:
"An empty gift box, blue striped and snow flaked, sits on a table, a reminder
of your recent visit.
You came to celebrate my January birthday, bringing forsythia blossoms
coaxed from the heart of winter (not forced, for that is not your style).
I almost turned you away, feeling anything but celebratory in the throes of
my sun-starved depression.

Wasn't too many white guys in this neighborhood after dark, otherwise. This one had a woman with him, a girl, really. Young. Fresh young, blonde, pretty. Nothing had been near those veins. She was new enough looking that back in old Willie Johnson's day, even a businessman like Clayvon would have felt obligated to send her home and tell her to leave this shit to the hard-core fiends, and go back to smoking herb in her little pink bedroom, like on television.

Boy From Outer Space; Working Horse; Borderline Young Woman Waits For Her Therapist by Rachael Z. Ikins

Childnoises
Bounce off gym walls
With kickballs

You see that kid?
With tissue-paper skin
And black eyes

Surprised!

In the whiteness of his face?
Children sneaker-slap
Floor clap

By me. . .

I had a lively debate with my sixteen-year-old son a few days ago. We were discussing the movie Blindness, which opened on October 3, and is based on the novel written by Portuguese author José Saramago. Like most teenage males, my son thought the previews looked great, with glimpses of epidemic, chaos, violence and horror. I'm familiar with this type of movie's appeal, as I saw I Am Legend and 28 Days with him-both films about the human struggle to overcome an unknown virus which turns people into raging, zombiesque creatures. Saramago's twist is that people become blind and are segregated, which he postulates will naturally lead to societal devolution.

I couldn't stifle the urge
to hike mountain trails,
raft rugged rivers,
picnic in the park,
fish mountain streams,
swim under waterfalls
and bask in the sun
on large, flat rocks
while really listening
to the birds singing
as if it was critical
to my survival.

Looking back,
after my excursions,
my instincts were right.

On a recent October Sunday that felt more summer than fall, more dense than crisp, I visited a meditation garden at the home of a physician who emigrated from Japan to Connecticut in the sixties. The friend who invited me didn't provide much background, except that the garden had been over thirty years in the making and that it was rarely open for public viewing.

I'm not much of a gardener myself. I've done a reasonably good job of bolstering my little gray Cape's "curb appeal" with a few andromeda and arborvitae. But my backyard (which I know aches with potential) swings between manic overgrowth and depressive neglect. I'm sure I'd get pleasure from making more of the little patch outside my sunroom, but lacking both confidence and cash, I'm paralyzed in perennial planning. Plus, the thought of tending a garden for three decades? Unfathomable. I stayed in my first house for over fifteen years, but since then, it's been three years here, three years there, all in pursuit of better investment return. At least that's what I told myself.

Acting Blind is a behind the scenes look into a non-professional group of actors rehearsing the play, "Dancing to Beethoven". The film follows the group's metamorphosis as they evolve from a haphazard bunch of amateurs into a practiced, balanced, performance group.

All the actors are blind and all but one experienced vision loss later in life. A few moments are taken to capture each actor's own struggle with the onset of his or her disability. For instance, one woman recalls the time she drove her car off the road: It was the last time she got behind the wheel.

The jets' relentless roar over Kennedy Airport pollutes the hearing of all nearby as the endless line of waiting yellow cabs exhaust what little breathable air there is. Flood lights positioned every few dozen feet blot out any semblance of twilight. The cold penetrates wherever it can: cracked windows, loosely buttoned coats, exposed skin. Abdullah Mohamet, a cabbie near the front of the line, buries himself in his seat with the heat blasting full force. After ten years in the city, his skin still stings when it comes in contact with even the slightest breeze. He's a creature of the desert. His dreams are crowded with hot, violent suns that boil the marrow.

He sits immobile, hunched low behind the wheel, giving his cab an appearance of abandonment. Every once in a while a shiver, deeper than any cold could possibly bring on, undulates through his body from his toes through his legs and up his spine to his scalp like dominoes falling in a line. The engine of his cab hums along steadily and monotonously, its soft, warming vibration reminiscent of an embrace.

The postcard I am pretending
to find fascinating
is of the Virgin Mary,
in Renaissance blue, with fleshly child.

The Paulist bookstore's one customer,
clad in formal blue and gray,
quietly browses; I quietly
envy him, in a vague, uncertain way
that deadens my abdomen.

By 1991 I was twenty-eight, three years past the half-way mark of twenty-five, two years before the big three-0. Not old in terms of a modern life span, but my bloom now hung heavier, my mind more impatient with aspirations yet unrealized, including the hope of a germane transformation, yet another variation on the Pygmalion myth the poet Ovid was kind enough to leave behind for Hollywood. (Think of Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller in the 1938 film of the same name, adapted from the play by George Bernard Shaw, which in turn led to the 1956 musical, My Fair Lady...) I would root out the loud and bilious working class origins, exchange them for a cosmopolitan hauteur and intellect that was perfectly cool and restrained, thus lifeless, or if not quite that, at least have a shield from the blows no one can contain.

Today I have a sense of a man on the corner
a man I walk past ever so often
click-clacking along as I do
that scent of unwashed whiskers, his razor blunt
from scraping forty years of dirt off his shoes
clasping fingers that reach, grasping at that innate
logic of superiority, but I know where I am heading
I am never lost

Birthweek
It was my birthday yesterday. Wish me happy birthday? Thank you. My star sign is Libra, which according to the Dine astrology chart means that I am supposed to like a good balance of leisure and social activity and that I enjoy smooth and uncomplicated relationships. Yet, I prefer to think of myself as a Leo. I do like to stand out from the crowd and enjoy being the life of the party. In addition, I have a real desire to assist others and help out around the house, as much as She will let me.

I am not very good at keeping track of time: it is not one of my many positive qualities. Nevertheless, I always know when it is my birthday because my personal health provider, Dr. Keith, sends me a birthday card.

It took effort just to get out of the car. Just to open the door, and get out, and say hello, how are you? And to open the door, and get back in again. To sit and wait for the pleasantries to end, and to drive away, far away, to anywhere but here.

It's not that you don't like your editor. It's not that you're all that anxious about what you wrote in the issue. Its not that you're nervous about anything in particular. You just feel it sometimes. You just feel it. A bubbling nausea, a searing ache in every bone. A cluttered, dizzy sensation. Like you're drowning. Like you've always been drowning.

Driving Without A Map
David Karp, a Professor of Sociology at Boston College and the author of Speaking of Sadness: Depression, Disconnection, and the Meanings of Illness, writes about what he knows in his latest book. He has suffered from depression most of his life and knows all too well the personal dilemma involved in taking antidepressants. Along with his own experience, Karp interviewed 50 people who also take medication for depression. In, Is It Me or My Meds? he looks at antidepressants through the eyes of those actually using them. What he finds is an experience much different from what the drug companies portray in their ads.

It's OK Not To Be OK
I am mentally ill; that's much easier to write than to say. Yet, I read my own statement and feel it is an exaggeration, as I associate mental illness with someone who is dangerous to others. But with me, the danger stays inside my head. I have obsessive compulsive disorder, commonly known as OCD. I've had it for years and didn't even know it. I just knew I was "different." Then one day, leisurely reading an Anne Landers column, I noticed a letter written by someone who claimed to have something called OCD. Like me, this person engaged in behavior that many would consider unusual, or even bizarre: checking work over and over again to see if a mistake had been made; worrying about forgetting to turn off or leave on lights; fearing contact with dirt, germs, etc. It was somewhat comforting to learn that my weirdness is something other people go through, and it even had a name - albeit, in my opinion, not a very good one.

I pull my body out of bed,
shuffle down the hall,
squint at the furnace buttons,
hope I press 'on'.

Heading back for those last minutes
of body flat on mattress
I notice light spilling
from his room.

All We Have To Go On
Making sense of your wants is playing charades without the rules, making socks without the pattern, packing clothes without a box. Do you want dinner, a toy, a bath? It's CIA-grade guesswork. Your needs—love, food, motion, sleep—appear simple, but your silence lends them complexity. I hope you speak up soon . . .

1

A Man was unconscious on his kitchen floor when a boy walked in expecting the usual mixture of song, humour and breakfast.
"Dad?"
An upset stool was lying next to the man, but his black Labrador looked on without concern.
Oh my God, no, Dad."
As the boy rushed over to the telephone, the man's red cheek was pressed hard against the cold black and white tiles. It was only a matter of seconds, but he resisted laughter for as long as he could and then leaped high into the air.
"I got you this time Master Jones, I got you this time well and truly."

The Short Bus
I both loved and hated this book. I loved it for its fast–reading, wacky, almost outlaw tone, and for the exciting and vital cast of characters Jonathan Mooney met while driving an iconic "short bus" across America. My favorite was Kent, performance artist, and author of the book Portrait of Your Momma as a Young Man who has turned his ADHD into Steven Wright–meets–Andy–Kaufman comedy riffs . . .

My Travelin' Roots
Sometime during my sixth year on this planet, my father, Marvin Barnes, asked me if I would like to travel with him in his semi–truck during some of his long haul trips around the country. I was very excited about doing so, and ultimately would log thousands of miles in states east and south of Wyoming when school was not in session.

I sit in a world of beauty.
The trees wave their arms in good cheer.
The flowers bow their colorful heads. The grasses whisper in rapture . . .

Classified
INTERNATIONAL: CHOICE
HISTORIC RESIDENCES going
at a steal. Massive living rooms,
with built-in pipe organs, stained
glass windows, vaulted ceilings,
fonts, excellent reading stands, at
least one high table, with banquet
seating possible, and assorted ce–
lebrity chairs.
Read Louie Crew's poem.

Dear One
The deer eats winter vegetation at the periphery of my yard. Occasionally, she flicks her tail, stops, and then stares forward and I could swear she is watching me. I drop my breakfast dishes into the sink to soak and continue staring out the kitchen window in admiration while I finish my coffee.

Ten minutes later, I grab my cane and head outside, wishing for the hundredth time that I owned an attached garage. I'm quiet about backing my car down the drive — just in case she is still enjoying breakfast, though I suspect she has gone.
Read Kathleen O'Connor's short story.

Nikki
Watching doves
peck away,
all day long at
a full bowl
of mixed seeds . . .

Bathroom Visitor
A horsefly
travels the world
of my bathroom.
Stops at the kitty litter box
on occasion for refueling . . .
Read Michael Lee Johnson's poems.

Tales of a Magic Fairy
What do you see when you look at us? It's all a matter of perception.

My mother thinks I'm her fairy. Her magic fairy. Her memory fairy. Her wonderful can do anything fairy. Bubble wands and fairies. they seem to go together. So maybe my mother's right.
Read Ria Strong's story.

The Birthday Party
We're together for the first time in five years. Three sisters. Terry, the oldest, pastes us together with persistence and illusion. She believes we can be a family, that we are a family. Julie, the youngest, bites her lower lip and wears a worried brow, even while driving her red Miata with the top down to her job as a South Florida city planner. And me, in the middle. I moved to Connecticut almost twenty years ago to cut free from my tangled roots, I thought. I know that my illness (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) structures my life in a way my family must find limiting, and that my writing aspirations might seem paltry and a little suspect. So when I return Upstate to the barren terrain on chilly Lake Ontario, where my neuroses and fears were planted, watered, and pruned, I take their suspicions as truth. I feel I've failed.
Read Madeleine Parish's essay.

Basket Full of Memories
Basket of apples
Swinging
As I tag along singing
Following my brother
Sitting on Mother's lap
As I take my first bite
The skin tight
On my teeth . . .
Read Cindy Prince's poem.

Concrete
My hip hurts. What is it to you?
There is no street that
travels through though you
remember your aunt, or Skipper, the dog.

The street hurts. One step on the grass, skip over
the concrete bit
relief
in the green middle.
Read Petra Kuppers' poem.

Canary
It was another couch day for Jesse, reluctant canary in the environmental coal mine of Planet Earth. She and her chemically sensitive friends called themselves canaries, because they believed their illness was a warning about the health effects of chemicals. Like one of the caged canaries that used to warn miners of gas leaks by keeling over, their little feet pointing pathetically skyward, Jesse lay immobile on the couch.
Read Dorothy Baker's short story.

When Will I Dance Again
Sometimes the only companion Katherine Devoir has is her camera, an unlikely living arrangement for a dancer and performance artist, but Katherine's struggles with environmental illness have turned her life from "privileged and white" to the isolation of government benefits and trying to regain more of her health, knowing that the medical establishment does little to acknowledge her "invisible" condition.
Read Erika Jahneke's film review.

Perfect
Only years later you told me. When it could change
nothing. You used the word "perfect".

It was early May several springs ago; we weren't
dating — or so we told ourselves. I invited
you to the opening of my group photography
show, where my bit of wall hosted a set of self–portraits
titled "chronic fatigue girl dreams of flying".
I waited for you for hours outside the bustling gallery . . .
Read Kamila Rina's poem.

Origami Striptease
Origami Striptease, by acclaimed poet and short story writer Peggy Munson, is a Breath and Shadow reader's wet dream, as the debut novel exemplifies a blend of disability culture and literature. Munson folds descriptions of life with chronic illness, lust, love, queerness, borderlands, abuse, and survival into one impactful read. The protagonist of Origami Striptease is a queer writer who develops "ink poisoning" after her encounter with a complicated villain called The Sludge . . .
Read Arden Eli Hill's book review.

Air Apparent
Aisling: The air was fine. They said so. The air was positively good. The E.P.A. said they did test after test after test — it was apparent; perfectly all clear, so the air was fine.

And all I did was live in my little half–studio over a guy and his family that runs the bodega downstairs. Half dog–walking, half social assistance — it's all I can do to give the guy rent every month. Not a bad guy, poor, but nice family, cute little kids. He works like a dog and I can't believe people pay me money to walk theirs . . .
Read Sandra Dempsey's monologue.

Breath & Shadow

A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature

Spring 2010
Volume 7, Number 2

Feasting by Diane Hoover Bechtler

Volume 6 Number 4; Fall 2009

Volume 6, Number 2; Spring 2009

Volume 6, Number 1; Winter/Spring 2009

Volume 5, Number 7; Fall/Winter 2008

Volume 5, Number 6; September, 2008

Volume 5, Number 5; July, 2008

Volume 5, Number 4; April 30, 2008; Potpourri Issue

Volume 5, Number 3; March 28, 2008; Spring Cleaning

Volume 5, Number 2; February 29, 2008; Disability and the Environment

Breath & Shadow

A Journal of Disability Culture and Literature

Spring 2010 Volume 7, Number 2

Feasting by Diane Hoover Bechtler

Volume 6 Number 4; Fall 2009

Volume 6, Number 2; Spring 2009

Volume 6, Number 1; Winter/Spring 2009

Volume 5, Number 7; Fall/Winter 2008

Volume 5, Number 6; September, 2008

Volume 5, Number 5; July, 2008

Volume 5, Number 4; April 30, 2008; Potpourri Issue

Volume 5, Number 3; March 28, 2008; Spring Cleaning

Volume 5, Number 2; February 29, 2008; Disability and the Environment

Spring 2010
Volume 7, Number 2