an old writer and his words

  • PHOTOGRAPH

    I saw a picture of you today, althoughI can’t be certain when it was taken,and while I can easily say that youlook exactly as I remember you,that is saying nothing really,for moments after I took the picturewe said goodbye to each other,intending to meet again, knowingthe chances of that were minuscule. I have returned your…

    Lou Faber

  • THE VILLAGE

    I’d like you to tell meabout the village in whichyou grew up, and how oddit must have been for youto have met my grandfatherso far from any villagein the heart of Lithuania.I suspect you leftwith your parents, exhaustedby pogroms, exhaustedby the Jewishnessthat to them defined you.I’d love to knowabout my mother whoI never got to…

    Lou Faber

  • SORT OF

    She is sifting through photo albums deciding which pictures to keep, which to discard, questioning why she kept some in the first place, blurred, ill composed. She sets very high standards now wondering why some were taken, the sun she says, all wrong here, the background in that one just swallows the subjects. I left…

    Lou Faber

  • PHOTO

    I look at the photo, me holding my granddaughter. Between us we are 57 years old, she has just celebrated her first birthday. In the photograph we are both laughing hysterically, in the photo we are both young children.

    Lou Faber

  • THE DEPTH OF MEMORY

    In deeply hidden corners of my memory snapshots of my childhood reappear from forgotten albums. I want to know what was happening just out of frame, or in the next picture in the series but these negatives are lost and so I am left to draw my own pictures, write my own story, and accept…

    Lou Faber