Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Excerpt from Chapter 21 The Fruit of Her Hands by Michelle Cameron Inch by inch, I slowly moved up to the pyre. The guards were still unloading the carts, piling the books in one enormous mound, cursing as the mountain grew higher and as books tossed on the top tumbled off and had to be restacked. Looking around, I saw the boys were right. ... Read More...
Getaway Reads 2017: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Emergings by Stephen Dunn Let’s say men and women begin as slime, and some of us crawl out of the sea, and fall into circumstance fraught with danger, and cannot survive, but do, slithering into a cave where the stories evolve, first as pictures on the walls, then as grunts that turn into something like words. For years, though, ... Read More...
Getaway Reads 2017: Funeral for a Childhood by Amanda Morris
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Funeral for a Childhood by Amanda Morris I mourn the childhood that I didn’t have. I remember the moment it clicked: The realization that everything I thought I knew, all my memories, represented a fantasy interpretation of events; untrue. We were sitting at a booth in the 50s style diner, the lingering scent of pancakes, maple syrup, and ... Read More...
Getaway Reads 2017: Fifty-Fifty by Roberta Clipper
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Fifty-Fifty by Roberta Clipper That’s what I call myself. My mother’s a mongrel. That’s what she says: ancestors from so many different parts of Europe that she can’t tell where she got the same name as Dad’s. It’s true! It’s on her birth certificate—Gillian Ann Gill. As southern as the William Williamses and Jo Ann Joneses of the West. I tease ... Read More...
Getaway Reads 2017: Two Poems by Peter E. Murphy
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Jamie Walters that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Mission Creep by Peter E. Murphy It’s why the pundits criticize the President, how something small turns into something huge and gets stuck so no one can extract it. “Pundit” comes from the Sanskrit meaning wise man, though today they’re mostly professional chatterers who line up on the talk shows like the hot cars along 42nd Street this ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Kendal Nicole Lambert that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Mrs. Cavendish and the Dancer by Stephen Dunn Mrs. Cavendish desired the man in the fedora who danced the tarantella without regard for who might care. All her life she had a weakness for abandon, and, if the music stopped, for anyone who could turn a phrase. The problem was Mrs. Cavendish wanted it all to mean something in a ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Thomas Lux
Murphy Writing of Stockton University Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Kendal Lambert that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Backyard Swing Set by Thomas Lux Splayed, swayback, cheap pipe playground: a swing, a slide, some rings maybe—we love our babies and a tire hanging from a branch won't do. For one summer it shines—red, the chains of silver, and beside it the blue plastic pool. First winter out it goes to rust. I love America's backyards, seen from ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy
This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Kendal Lambert that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Grand Fugue by Peter E. Murphy After the hospital released me with a warning, I walked around this busy city that hadn’t noticed I’d been missing, me and my reconstructed heart, so full of gratitude I wanted to kiss every light that flashed GO, forgive the ones that said STOP. And when I felt the earth throb under my feet I remembered the subway below where commuters were ... Read More...