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. The Need for Character by Richard K. Weems Until this morning, my story was the same as any other yokel leaning on the brass rail at 9 a.m. Until this morning, there was no reason to tell my story to anyone but the tenderer of the booze and every-goddamn-one else like me: hiding in the dark in broad daylight, feeling safe with those who ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Between People by Diana Goetsch
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. Between People by Diana Goetsch In a very real sense, all of us are transitioning. My life broke down two years ago at age 50, though it was broken all along. I seemed to be a well-functioning man named Douglas Goetsch: a teacher who’d taught at Stuyvesant High School and various universities, a poet with award-winning collections, a ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: The Sea Crest by Jeff Bens
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. The Sea Crest by Jeff Bens I’d moved to Atlantic City to take care of my father. My sister Daphne had called from Tampa Bay to say that his number was up. “What are we going to do?” she asked me, like we talked all the time, like we was a thing. “How bad?” “He wouldn’t say.” I didn’t have anywhere else to go. Jillian had ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by BJ Ward
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. Cuckoldom by BJ Ward Such conundrums of English. I blame my ex-wife. She rearranged my dictionary, or re- taught an old story: in this book, if you look for alimony, it follows acrimony (nothing between). However, contrition still borders contrivance (if it can be seen). Untruth in her troth sallowed the language, sullied 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...
Getaway Reads: If You Are Absolutely Certain, I Get Suspicious by Mimi Schwartz
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. If You Are Absolutely Certain, I Get Suspicious by Mimi Schwartz Unreliable narrators are everywhere: On Fox News or MSNBC, depending on your politics. In film, theater, and of course literature, which was the original focus of a term coined by critic Wayne Booth in 1961 to refer to a fictional ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Two Poems by Stephen Dunn
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. After Making Love by Stephen Dunn No one should ask the other "What were you thinking?" No one, that is, who doesn't want to hear about the past and its inhabitants, or the strange loneliness of the present filled, even as it may be, with pleasure, or those snapshots of the future, different heads on different ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Excerpt from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. A Murmur of Growing Intensity from Killing the Messenger by Thomas Peele That bright, sunny morning seemed like just another day. I had moved to California seven years earlier and had only recently committed to staying longer, having just turned down a good newspaper job in New Jersey. That summer I was in the throes of finishing a graduate ... Read More...
Getaway Reads: Abduction from the Seraglio by Roberta Clipper
Murphy Writing of Stockton College Presents This entry is part of Getaway Reads, an e-mail series curated by Taylor Coyle that features the writing of the Winter Poetry & Prose Getaway faculty. Abduction from the Seraglio by Roberta Clipper I met her in London. In my cousin Shawn's favorite black and tan. We're the only cousins the same age. Our mothers are sisters. We were always begging them to fly us to each other's houses—him to visit me in Nairobi, me to spend school holidays with him in London. I was staring at her long, ... Read More...