Michael Estabrook is retired. No more useless meetings under florescent lights in stuffy windowless rooms, he is able instead to focus on making better poems when he’s not endeavoring to satisfy his wife’s legendary Honey-Do List. His latest collection of poems is Bouncy House, edited by Larry Fagin (Green Zone Editions, 2016).
When the teenaged girl’s physician joined us, I knew it was no ordinary transport to another hospital. At first I thought he wanted to keep us on our toes, but he ignored us. He hovered over his tiny patient. She was too tiny for a 17-year-old. He watched the girl as we loaded the gurney. …
The first time your mother didn’t come home, I worried about her. When it happened a second time I worried about me. The third time I spent the night staring at the red numbers of the clock, I worried about you. She never gave us a fourth time. I haven’t seen her since. Before you …
Connor Durham wrenched the backpack out of his locker. “Hey man,” Blake said, “you ready to go?” Connor closed the locker, and they walked down the hallway toward the exit. He pushed through the doors and headed for the sidewalk. Blake chased him outside. “Where you headed?” he asked. “Practice starts in ten minutes. I …
We traipse the length of the clinic, searching its wall of mirrored panels for the entrance, and finally find it on our second pass; but when I lean into it, it won’t budge. I try to peek through the glass, but all I can make out are my eyes. I curl my knuckles, ready to …
I was twelve years old growing up in San Francisco’s Sunset District. It was the ’50s, and everything was changing. I turned the radio dial and heard, “Shrimp boats are coming, their sails are in sight.” I turned that dial a little farther and “Sh-boom!” And at the end of the dial “I found my …
George Gordon Byron, aka Lord Byron (1788–1824), was an English poet, peer, politician, and a leading figure in the Romantic movement. He is regarded as one of the greatest British poets and remains widely read and influential. Among his best-known works are the lengthy narrative poems, “Don Juan,” “Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage,” and the short lyric …
A boy’s passage to manhood usually includes making love with a woman. His first confrontation with her nudity is slack-jawed, breathtaking wonderment. Tales in this section, “The Simple Truth of Her,” by John Updike, and “Cool,” by Ron Jones, find guys trying to deal with this first intimate encounter, one all men feverishly wish to …