In Innocence Lost and Found Part 1 and Part 2, I began describing the year I spent in a small New Jersey town when I was eight: Cool Walter who claimed me with his kiss in the woods behind the baseball diamond. My upwardly mobile and disappointingly racist mom. Jealous Melinda, rich Nancy. African-American Cassandra being treated like a contagious […]
If you haven’t already, I suggest you go back and read Part I of Innocence Lost and Found, in which I began describing the third-grade year I spent in an idyllic New Jersey town. Only, it wasn’t so idyllic…
When I was eight, I did a brief stint in prison. By “prison” I mean a small town in New Jersey. Don’t get me wrong; there were some lovely things about that town. It was the pastoral small town of times gone by, with only two main streets, a lake in the middle, and the kind of safety that permitted […]
I don’t know why, but I wrote my first poem when I was six. It was an ode to female beauty that started, “Her face was the color of peaches and cream, with strawberry juice in between.” Not exactly subtle, huh. Born already of stories about blushing princesses and sleeping beauties that so shape the young lives of women. I […]
