an old writer and his words

  • THE FINAL? TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN

    ENTRY:    March 23, 1992   Damn David, what was he thinking?  I should be over at Shirley’s playing mah jongh, but no.  Ma, you need some adventure in your life.  Like I need hemorrhoids, I need this.  Schvitzing like a fountain, I’m the queen of Mardi Gras.  Who is he kidding?  I’m a Jewish dishrag…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE MORE TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN

    ENTRY:  March 27, 1971 So, finally he’s here.  Nine months, what God, another joke?  Okay, she ate the damned apple, so stick it to the snake.  But what would you know, another man.  For six hours I’m lying there, dying from pain before the shmendrick walks in like some king, smiles at all the cutesy…

    Lou Faber

  • DEFLATED DREAMS

    when did youthful dreamsslip awayerodeget consumed byparentsteachersor simply abandoned reality, yourstheirs a poor substituteall edgesand pointspiercing hope love once (a) givenrendered faint hopeworse, impossible dreamdelusion? you wantto think notwant so muchcan’t havebad for youwe know goodwhen we give itnone for you timepast sogrow up

    Lou Faber

  • AROMA

    What I want, no, need actually,is to remember the smells of youth.The images I can recall, but they areaged pictures, run repeatedly throughthe Photoshop of memory, andcannot be trusted only desired. The old, half ready to fall oak,in the Salt Lake City park hada faint pungency that lingeredeven as I departed my body asthe acid…

    Lou Faber

  • TUESDAY TRUTH: THE SPRATTS

    I mean, seriously, did anyone really think that the Spratt marriage would ultimately last? Sure, the first couple of years were imagined bliss. And sure, their dietary desires did help them avoid almost all waste. But that big a difference, even if only seemingly in eating habits, foretells differences in other areas of life. He…

    Lou Faber

  • A SMALL PAIL OF TRUTH

    The Good news about rom-coms is that Hollywood (and occasionally Paris, Lisbon and Madrid, but never Berlin) crank them out endlessly, and each contains that grain or two of truth, like salt rubbed in the wound of a failed first marriage, and the balm of the discovery of true and abiding love. The small pail…

    Lou Faber

  • A MESSAGE HOME

    What I want to tell her is this: it’s fitting, perfectly, that you who so assiduously hid the past from me, your past and mine, now bars your entry, refusing you even the briefest glimpse. You want so to grab onto it to have it carry you to a place removed from here by time…

    Lou Faber

  • GAZING

    As a child I would often stare up into the night sky. The stars, the planets, at least the two I knew I could see. My parents didn’t think my behavior odd, they assumed I wanted to be a scientist and explore the universe. I let them believe this. It was far easier than explaining…

    Lou Faber

  • THE SON

    He hangs on the guest room wall, simply framed in black, adjoining his more ornate, Cheshire- cat smiling sister. He isn’t brooding really, there is just a certain needful sadness, as he stares out, imagining how he pictured things would be, how they were supposed to be, realizing here, they never were, never will be,…

    Lou Faber