Eliot Schain & Jewel Beth Davis

Almost Heaven - Eliot Schain

The reincarnation of Stevie Nicks is working retail at Nepenthe,
the Big Sur pit stop overlookiing the sea, with mountains rising
like the shoulders of that funny god who keeps pushing us...

and her voice is imprinted with cigarettes and acid, as she counts
the change carefully and hands over the Buddha-inflected gifts with
a cool man, you're outta' sight, after you tell her you'll be traveling
up Route 1 in a van full of ex-Baptists just looking for a good ledge...

so you answer who's playing this rock concert anyway? then
how did that strobe light get inside your hips? and finally can't
we just get down in the guitar-carved grottoes of your brain before
another thirty years of cigarettes for breakfast, my bibles for lunch?

can't we make it happen right here on this Hideaway Cliff...
which could be just the ticket for a Mister Nobody from Nowhere
as he blows into a sweet girl named You, still sixteen in the head
and coasting like the gull suspended out there in those chilly winds?

The Revenge of the Christ Killer, by Jewel Beth Davis
The first time I heard I was a murderer was in Miss Johnson’s class in second grade. It must have been nearing the holidays and Miss Johnson, a, silver-haired, reedy woman who addressed us all as “gels and boys,” was talking about the fact that though Christmas was approaching, not everyone celebrated that most wonderful of all holidays. (more)

Joanne N. Ford, Jennifer Haigh, and Marie Stern

Therapy in Photographic Time - Joanne N. Ford
(A Tribute to Ansel Adams)

Today’s therapy session will be off the record.
There will be nothing to interpret.
No scenarios of what is or might be.
Nothing to analyze; except the photograph
Of the mountain peaks and the heavy clouds
Heaving themselves against the native skies.
We’ll discuss how the soft winter light
Glides as smoothly as oil
Above the timberline and the shadows
Leaving traces on the brazen plains.
How still everything is and how thin the pockets of air are.
The trees with their stark pencil branches
Leaving sketch marks across the valley below.
We’ll wonder about the snow descending (ever so slowly)
Like yesterday’s pain blanketing and wrapping itself
Around the troubled heart and mind.
Perhaps, today we’ll learn something new.
Solve some problem hidden in the darkroom.
Photographic paper emerging from the tray of chemicals,
Erasing the deepest darkness as it ascends upwards,
Thundering, Spirit-fire flashing across the horizon.



COMPASS ROSE interviews Jennifer Haigh:
Compass Rose:
Your recent novel, Baker Towers, has been lauded for its historical accuracy. Was there anything in particular that drew you to 1940s America?

Jennifer Haigh:
Well, the war changed everybody’s life: the young men who went away to fight, the families and lovers who stayed behind. In the post-war period, towns like Bakerton were truly transformed. Lots of people left, and new people came. This made for interesting times. (more)



The Dying Sounds, by Marie Stern.
The light from the TV made Jason’s face look biliously gray, anemic. “I didn’t think you could get through the biological clock anymore. There just aren’t those kind of loopholes. That’s gotta be faked. There’s no way." (more)