Sometimes her silences make me feel like I’m underwater, reaching upward through murky dark. My extended fingers reaching for a surface, trying to break through the invisible hydrogen bonds that separate air from sea.
Tonight I’ll blame the sherry for the fanciful images playing in the back of my mind—an evening, a mellow light cast from the hearth into a room textured with polished wood and soft things, a sofa lumpy with pillows, a thick, nubbled carpet, its surface worn to silkiness.
He is thirty-five, wears Hai Karate aftershave, drives a maroon 1970 El Dorado, and sits too close to me on the piano bench. For the first fifteen minutes of every piano lesson, Vic Giovanni details his sexual exploits, claiming numerous rendezvous with many Hollywood actresses.
My mother’s mother was a city girl, and no number of chickens – their heads popping off on the block as her husband relieved each body of brain – could make her otherwise. Not that she didn’t try.
January, or “Jani,” was born a genius; at three years old, she could read and calculate mathematics in her head. But if she didn’t receive constant mental stimulation, she could succumb to violent meltdowns.
Love is exactly the word that comes to mind when reading the memoir of actress and literary newcomer Kristen Johnston. Guts: The Endless Follies and Tiny Triumphs of a Giant Disaster (Gallery Books, 2012) encompasses her brilliant journey from darkness to light.
Which is what telling stories is, if you think about it – attempting to leave behind something that wasn’t there before. Arranging words in the order in which they belong, even before you knew that these words, in this order, existed.
Show and tell is theater. As writers, we can’t help but love it. Like children, we harbor indeterminate, odd wonders. The idea that slips inside a pocket. The fringe of inspiration. We collect words like talismans – tessellation, shambolic, caducity – and cup them in our palms.
Author Teresa Rhyne’s memoir, The Dog Lived (And So Will I) tells of the cancer battles fought by both her and her rescue beagle Seamus. Funny and poignant, the book speaks volumes about the love humans feel toward their pet companions…and vice versa.
I am pleased to share with our readers (and nominees!) the six stories we’ve selected as Pushcart Prize nominees this year.
