latest by jen
What I imagine when I imagine the end of the world
Short Fiction When I imagine the end of the world, I am alone at the edge of a cliff. It’s evening and God Only Knows by the Beach Boys is playing on a box radio I looted from my neighbor’s basement. If it were a movie, I’d be gazing out over the city lights of Los Angeles just as the electricity went out, as one by one the skyscrapers lost power, and the city fell dark. A …
Let the summer of 40 begin
When I was a younger girl, I never imagined I’d marry a guy my own age. It’s not that I was into older guys. Mamash, LO, as we say in Hebrew. Definitely NOT. Older guys scared me. I typically dated guys who were maximum two years older. This was my boyfriend demographic for many years. Guys my own age were my friends; little brothers. Guys older than me by more than two years also landed …
The obligatory notice
Almost as often as I change the furniture around in my house, I like to play with the look and feel of the blog. Please note the new design only enough to be aware that it’s still me. Fine. I admit it. I was really looking for an excuse to post this not-half-bad picture of almost-40-year-old-me. The redesign is just a ruse. Not half bad, right? But DO note the new MENU in the sidebar of the …
Take heed
What if the woman who’s leaving Bob Dylan in Boots of Spanish Leather returns one day? Maybe instead of boots she just brings her older, softer, leathery self to a cafe where it’s said Dylan sometimes drinks black coffee. I imagined that woman and with her in mind, played a little with blackout poetry. It’s the first time I almost like the result. Take Heed I just thought you might want a long ol’ time alone. From the storm From the …
Throw my suitcase out there, too
The best coworker I ever had was the one who every morning sat with me for a half hour while drinking our morning coffee and did dream analysis with me. She was good. So was I. Coffee + dream analysis = best way to start the morning. I’m pretty decent on my own, but it’s more fun to analyze your dreams with a friend. I also really enjoy showing people the obvious connections they are …
Photographic memory
I love photography even though I’ve never been as good at the art as I might have liked; might have been. I’m grateful — seriously, grateful — to Instagram, for allowing me an outlet for the scenes I capture in my mind’s eye and feel compelled to share, but hardly ever render to my satisfaction on a traditional camera. I took photography as an elective in high school — learned how to develop my own film …
Subway metaphor
It’s likely I will never understand the passage of time. By the time I understand I will have passed time. Quickly like the express train. People some I know become blurred colors along a tiled wall. Their names once tiled too in a mosaic of sorts crumble and all that is left is a private joke as private as can be because it’s with me now. I see myself at the turnstile at the 18th …
My memory waited 14 years for this photo to catch up
“We took our coffee into the living room. He stood at the stereo and asked if I had any requests. ‘Something Blue-ish,’ I said. While he flipped through his records, he told me about the time he’d asked his daughter for requests; she was about three at the time and cranky after a nap, going down the stairs one at a time on her butt. He imitated her saying, ‘No music, Daddy.’ ‘I told her we had to listen to …
The after-taste of a dream
My dreams are poems Righting themselves upside down in Not-for-long Ville. Still fresh with relief when I wake I take a pen so I may keep them. But the poems fade faster than the dream even when I whisper, “Don’t.” What’s left then, but last night’s dream, which will never be anything more than
From the eyes of Mrs. Murry
Meg’s mother picked up the pair of brown tortoise shell reading glasses from the top of the bedroom dresser. She gently put them on and leaned in to study her face in the reflection. Cocking her head to the right, she removed the pair, placed the chewed earpiece in her mouth, and sucked the grooves in between the teeth marks. Only then did she notice the smudge on the lens. Instinctively, she reached for a tissue …
In this world, there is a fragile child
There is a cry lodged There at the farthest most upper reaches There at the roof of my mouth. There, its origin may be found in between There in between an exhale and an inhale There where an ujjiyai breath washes over it. There is not a wet cry There lies a very ancient dry cry There where it’s drier than a long suckled Japanese well. There is nothing to do There but notice how stuck …
The wail
As the two-minute siren commemorating Yom HaZikaron (Israel’s Memorial Day for the fallen) began its descent, a poem began to rise. Please take a few minutes to travel over to the Times of Israel, where it’s posted.
Why yoga is the ultimate “ex”
I’m on again in my on again-off again relationship with yoga. This, perhaps, is why you might find more typos in this post than normal. My right shoulder is a little upset with me. It’s even trembling as I type. I’ve been practicing yoga — and practicing is truly the operative word here since I’ve never quite committed nor become expert — since 1997. It was through an employee-friendly work environment at Scholastic that I found …
In the dark
I was one of those kids who was afraid of the dark. Now, when I say “one of those kids” I do pause for a moment and wonder what kid isn’t afraid of the dark. What adult isn’t still? I think most of us are afraid of the dark. Even grownups. We just pretend we’re not or drug ourselves or sex ourselves up to believe otherwise. We do something to smother the very innate fear we …
When you don’t have anything to say
This time of year in Israel is often uncomfortable for me. I won’t say difficult, because it seems highly inappropriate to label anything in my life as “difficult” in the same breath as I speak of the Holocaust, of war, of fallen youth. But it’s uncomfortable. In very quick succession, we here in Israel — we being newspaper-reading adults and school-going children — are inundated with Holocaust-related content, followed quickly and intensively by war-related content. …
Nostalgia sounds like …
“There’s an echo in the wind Makes me wonder where I’ve been” The closest appliance to a time travel machine I’ve ever owned arrived in my mailbox today. I sold my yellow Sony edition at a yard sale over a decade ago. This one is a gift from a friend who knows how desperate I’ve been for a portal back. I popped in some AA batteries I had on hand (thank GOD) and chose a tape …
Give me your tired your poor your books
It’s no secret I love old books. I cry over them like they’re wounded, abandoned puppies crouching behind a garbage bin in the rain. Sometimes I rescue them, but then have no use for them. (Again, like puppies.) Often there’s a story behind the compulsion to save them. I’ll save any Little House on the Prairie book I see, simply because I lost my original set of them in a flood. (For the same reason, …
I Can’t Be Trusted
Don’t believe a word of it. Not a letter. Not even a space or a hard return. None of it is to be trusted nor considered true. At best, one or two or ten of my words will last longer than the quart of 1% cow’s milk shoved into a crusty corner of my ornery fridge. I repeat; my song is sung in tune for the length of a long exhale. After that, it’s expired. …
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Welcome to My New Web Site! (2021)
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Seven New Poems (2021)
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New Lyric Essay on Love and Time (2021)
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Into the Dream Is Now on Patreon (2021)
Interview with Author Rivka Galchen (2016)
Interview with Author Curtis Sittenfeld (2016)
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New on District Lit (2015)
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New Poem Up at Silver Birch Press
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Book Review: The Ambassador
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