Townsend Walker My parents must have evolved from frogs. Frogs seldom form families or care for their offspring; they just mate and jump. It took me twenty-three years to have a family; my brother Jack never did; and my sisters married Jesus. I was born in the middle of a snowstorm in New York City, January 1913. My father left us in 1914. Didn’t come home one day. Deserted my mother, Jack, Elizabeth, Arleene, the baby, and me. My...

Jascha Kessler Lots of influence. Lots of anxiety. The graduation photo that once stood on the baby grand stuffed into the small living room on the sixth floor just beneath the ash-dropping chimney of the incinerator shows a 16-year old with clear eyes and the carved features of some unknown, handsome youth. Somehow it does not show the acne, although an-aged writer sees in his shaving mirror today its faint scarred pittings. Neither...

James Feller Around 1 am, after my parents had gone to sleep–mom in bed, dad passed out to the Discovery Channel on the couch–I quietly tiptoed out of my bedroom. The whole downstairs smelled strongly of cigarettes and I remembered my childhood. Summer mornings, obsessively examining my baseball card collection, I would call out to my mother. After no response, I knew she was in the basement again, half-heartedly attempting to hide...