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Poemeleon Prose-Poem Issue Now Online
2007-12-06 11:01:00
  Online literary journal Poem eleon has just released its latest issue, which is devoted to the prose-poem. In addition to poetry by Jimmy Santiago Baca, Christina Lovin, Eve Rivkah, Cecilia Woloch, yours truly, and many others, Ann E. Michael contributes a thought-provoking essay about typography as a conveyor of meaning. Poetry has been represented through the typographic art for several centuries; but until recently, few poets have spent much time considering how typography affects the form of the poem. After all, the printed page seems ?merely? physical, inanimate, without the breath, rhythm and music that vivify the poem in performance (even if the reader performs it silently, while reading). The printed page has traditionally been the realm of the editor or designer, not the poet who is more accustomed, perhaps, to confrontations with the blank page. But now that we can, essentially, typeset our work as we compose, poets are becoming more aware of how margins, ...
More About: Site News , Poems , Prose

"The Race Unwon" and Other New Writing by "Conway"
2007-12-03 17:24:00
My prison pen pal "Conway", who is serving 25-to-life at a maximum-security facility in California for receiving stolen goods, has sent me another packet of exciting new work this month:The Race Unwonby ConwayLike withered old leaves on a Hanged mans treeabsorbing the useless sun'light they saveto power only an abandoned memoryinside dreary chill shadows of his gravewith unquenching air recycled-n-staleour sun was walled out of existenceunable to recover warmth from the veilbrought on by the shame of persistenceunnatural walls, kneeling left pleadingyet still a judgment remains sittingamong the rubble of babylons leadingthrown-up, jumbled enormous forbiddingIn these volumes of created humanitynecromanced from the living deadBaptized by fire with insanityrunning cold as the blood being shed.Chase me away from their stencherase their stench from meI've no more vengeance to quenchnor do I desire this bitter memorythough the waves still sing your songover & over with pounding pain...
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Book Notes: Openly Gay Openly Christian
2007-12-02 21:56:00
Rev. Samuel Kader's Openly Gay Openly Christian : How the Bible Really is Gay Friendly bridges the gap between serious Bible-believing Christians and those who want to affirm gay and lesbian relationships. The latter group includes liberal churches and theologians whose relationship to the Bible is vague, superficial or outright antagonistic, which has tended to confirm conservatives' fears that gay-friendly theology waters down the faith. Many evangelicals have never heard a solid Scriptural case for GLBT inclusion. Kader's scholarly analysis of "clobber passages" in Genesis, Leviticus and the Epistles makes that much-needed case, though in other chapters he repeats familiar pro-gay readings of the Bible that I think are strained and potentially distracting. Hunting for examples of same-sex pairings in the Bible (David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi) unnecessarily sexualizes all intimate bonds, a reductionism to which our culture has been prone since Freud. Moreover,...
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Saints and Laborers
2007-11-30 18:30:00
One of the pleasures of praying the Daily Office is the juxtaposition of Bible verses, prayers and spiritual readings that makes me reflect on familiar verses in a new way. Yesterday's gospel was the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, in Matthew 20:1-16. That's the one where Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a landowner who pays all his workers the same amount, whether they worked all day or only for an hour. This parable sometimes comforts, sometimes outrages, and always fascinates me. To feel validated as a human being, I need to believe two somewhat contradictory things: that God cares about fairness, and that God loves each of us unconditionally, in some way that doesn't depend on our relative merits. The online Daily Office at Mission St. Clare includes brief biographies of saints and great Christian historical figures. To these, also, I have a complex relationship. Sometimes I feel deeply and personally cared for by these people whom I h...
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Poetry Roundup: Teicher, Rodriguez, Rose
2007-11-25 18:12:00
In the course of researching winners of major contests for the next Winning Writers newsletter, I came across some exceptional poems online that I wanted to share with readers of this blog. One of my New Year's resolutions for 2008 will be to get caught up on my review copies because there are so many exciting new books being published. Here, samples of three very different authors:Jennifer Rose 's second book, Hometown for an Hour, has won several prizes including the Publishing Triangle's Audre Lorde Award. Structured as a series of postcards from cities ranging from Gettysburg to Mostar, the book explores experiences of rootlessness and belonging. For instance, in "Provincetown Postcard", she writes:The street's deserted,as if a villain and the sheriff wereabout to shoot it out, though nobodypeers from behind these shuttersexcept the endless pairs of sunglassesstaring toward June. Eight o'clock.A church bell and one foghorn sing an ariaso poignant I want t...
More About: Poetry , Book Reviews , Roundup , Rodriguez

Juliet OC: "Just This Here Now"
2007-11-22 20:41:00
A member of the British writers' forum ABCTales.com who writes under the pen name Julie t OC has contributed this lyrical, intense story that combines raw emotion with careful literary craft: ?Just this here now? just this here now? just this, here now? just this, here, now,? she whispers the mantra into the incensed air. ?Just this? here? now? only now is important, we only have this moment? just this, here now.? A river rushes past my left ear, it bubbles and fades as distant bells grow closer, like the church on the hill on summer mornings, or cows in an Alpine meadow. The dog collapses into my side, he only lives for now; just this, here now. I screw his fur in my palm, and he throws his head back into my lap as I breathe in on, just this; and out on, here now. I imagine us in a painting, the title; Dying in ecstasy, sub-title; just this here now. My sister snores in the hospital bed as I lie on her ?real? bed, her old bed. She doesn?t lie on it anymore, not even in the daytime....

Robert Orsi: Scholarship as an Act of Love
2007-11-15 15:47:00
  Catholic historian of religion Robe rt A. Orsi delivered the 2007 commencement address at Harvard Divinity School. His speech, "Love in a Time of Distraction", is reprinted on page 8 of the Harvard Divinity Today summer newsletter, online as a PDF file here. This excerpt stood out for me: Scholarship is the practice of disciplined attention to the world as we find the world, in its undeniable otherness and difference, but most of all in its obdurate and resistant presence. It is our privilege in the humanities and social sciences to go as inquirers into the company of other humans in the present and the past. We meet these men and women and children in the archives, in texts and in fragments of texts, and in the field. We find them always in the immediate circumstances of their lives, at work on their worlds; we find them in webs of relationship with each other that come to include us, once we have entered their worlds, in the present and in the past. And we meet the...

The Depressed Christian
2007-11-15 11:09:00
Christians prone to depression, as I am, can feel extra burdens of shame and doubt. We've heard the best news in the world, yet we can hardly motivate ourselves to butter our toast. Are we failing to work the program, or does the program itself not work? Are we setting a bad example in a world already inclined to believe that our faith is useless at best, harmful at worst? Travis Mamone's article The Boy with the Thorn in His Side at Relevant Magazine asks these exact questions. With humor and pathos, he describes how he read The Bible Code last year and became paralyzed with fear that the apocalypse was imminent. Though he eventually debunked that specific worry, he was disturbed by how easily the habit of panic returned, despite his faith: When will this struggle be over? I had been dealing with mental illness for most of my life now, and I was getting sick of it. There was nothing else I wanted more than to just wake up one day and no longer have another anxiety attack. Ev...
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Book Notes: The Gift of Being Yourself
2007-11-13 11:21:00
Christian psychologist and spiritual director David G. Benner has written an intriguing but too-brief inspirational volume, The Gift of Being Yourself: The Sacred Call to Self-Discovery, whose premise is that knowing God is inseparable from knowing yourself. This might sound like New Age self-deification, but Benner's orthodoxy is solid. Relationships require authenticity. If we are afraid to be our true selves, he says, we are also afraid to encounter God in prayer. This observation rang true for me because fear of myself has been a major obstacle to my prayer life. Sometimes it's that I don't want to know my own sins; other times, I'm afraid that I couldn't process the intense emotions of prayer without losing my mental balance. Then the people whose affection I want to retain will reject me, saying, "Who is this depressing person who cries all the time even though her life is so fortunate? Obviously, whatever she believes, it doesn't work."And ...
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Christina Lovin: "Coal Country"
2007-11-12 11:41:00
I.What I can't remember, and what I can:my mother washing coal dust from the necksof Mason jars filled with last summer's jamsand vegetables, their lids and rings blackwith grit, contents obscured then visiblebeneath the touch of a damp flannel ragshe wiped across hand-printed labels,then dipped again into an enamel panwhere gray water settled from suds to silt.Those cloths were always discarded, neverused for dishes again, deemed unfitfor the kitchen. Fifty years are overnow: I've known sullied cloth and family:how some stains never wash out completely.II.Some stains never wash out completely,but my mother's mother, Mary, would scrubworn work camisas for the soiled but neatlyoiled and pompadoured Mexican railroad-tie men who came to coal country layingthe wooden ties two thousand to the mile.Boiled in lye, bleach in the wash and bluingin the rinse, the shirts emerged starkly whiteand innocent as angels. But these iron horsemenof the Apocalypse, bearing spikes and crossesfor coa...
More About: Country , Coal , Christina

Jen Besemer: "The Sea of No Future"
2007-11-11 17:38:00
Writers of "transgressive" fiction now have an outlet at Ignavia, a new online journal seeking submissions of stories that are "dark, edgy and queer." (Maximum 4,000 words; submit by email only.) I found Jen Besemer's story from the first issue especially compelling. An excerpt: My mother is the sound of derisive laughter, my father is a gunshot. I am the crust of bread left on the table after the guests are gone, or perhaps?sometimes?I am the lost bicycle of autumn found at the bottom of spring?s ravine. In either case I am, how do you say it, flotsam or jetsam. That which is thrown overboard, that which is overbalanced, topheavy, that which is fallen.No. And again, no. I reject this present tense because I am no longer a shipwreck nor a wreck of any kind. No bruises darken my jaw, no scars slender as night glove my wrists or decorate my throat, and my long strand of bright freshwater pills has been buried for months. Oh, loss. That I could have pined for even these things, imagin...
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A Royal Priesthood
2007-11-10 18:41:00
Today is the feast day of Pope Leo the Great, bishop of Rome from 440 to 461 AD, whose writings played a significant role in clarifying the doctrine of the Incarnation. James Kiefer at The Daily Office shares this encouraging passage from one of his sermons: Although the universal Church of God is constituted of distinct orders of members, still, in spite of the many parts of its holy body, the Church subsists as an integral whole, just as the Apostle says: we are all one in Christ. . .For all, regenerated in Christ, are made kings by the sign of the cross; they are consecrated priests by the oil of the Holy Spirit, so that beyond the special service of our ministry as priests, all spiritual and mature Christians know that they are a royal race and are sharers in the office of the priesthood. For what is more king-like that to find yourself ruler over your body after having surrendered your soul to God? And what is more priestly than to promise the Lord a pure conscience and to...
More About: Royal , Episcopal , Priesthood

Makoto Fujimura on Jesus and Monsters
2007-11-09 16:28:00
Acclaimed visual artist Makoto Fujimura shares some profound insights about resisting the cultural imperative to choose between religious faith and the unfettered artistic imagination, in this article from Implications, the online journal of the Trinity Forum. Highlights: If you are an artist, you know you are seen as out of the mainstream, as avant-garde, but you also have been treated like a misfit or patronized like a child. You struggle to find meaning and significance in that gap between the two seemingly irreconcilable worlds. ?Grow up and do something useful for society!? The world seems to place them in opposition, pitting Innocence against the reality of the Experience. Artists are caught between being able to have that curiosity, inquisitiveness, and emboldened sense of discovery of a child and the reality of the ?adult world,? a reality that forces us to realize that we all indeed live in fear, in a ground zero of some kind or another. In our conversation t...
More About: Jesus , Monsters , Mons

Getting Unstuck
2007-11-07 16:51:00
Tiny Lights: A Journal of Personal Narrative hosts an online forum for contributors to weigh in on the question of the month. October's topic was the ever-timely (or ever-untimely, depending on how you look at it) problem of writer's block: How Do You Get Unstuck?  Some words of wisdom I found especially useful: Arlene L. Mandell: "Here?s a radical idea: Perhaps it?s all right to be stuck sometimes, not to be a busy little writing bee frantic for that next fuzzy morsel of pollen. Badly mixed metaphors like this one often come from the need to put something, anything, on the page."Harriet Gleeson: "The problem was possibly triggered when a respected mentor suggested that I could aim at a (first) chapbook using the theme Flight, the metaphor which has been winging its way into my work recently with no particular effort. The thought of publication was maybe too exciting -- I started to WORK towards the chapbook perhaps -- WORK the metaphor into my current piece, when what I need...

Recent Publications: Juked, Fulcrum and Others
2007-11-06 19:21:00
A roundup of my recent publications news: I just learned that I won an honorable mention in the 2007 Juked Fiction and Poetry Prize for my poems "Confession" and "The Opposite of Pittsburgh". (Partial credit for the latter poem goes to "Ada Porter", the character in my novel who actually wrote it. I just do whatever the voices in my head tell me.) In other news, my poem "Zeal" was accepted for the 2008 issue of FULCRUM: An Annual of Poetry and Aesthetics, an exciting journal edited by my old Harvard classmate Philip Nikolayev and his wife Katia Kapovich. (But as George W. Bush said when he went to Yale, I got in solely based on merit.) Philip's latest book is Letters from Aldenderry. Another poem, "Delivered", will appear in the prose-poem issue of Poemeleon next month. I'll link to it here when the issue comes out. Finally, the University of Texas School of Law has made available online some poems I had published in the 2004 collection Off the Record...
More About: Site News , Poems , Publications , Recent

"Once Again" by "Conway"
2007-11-05 12:14:00
  "Conway", my pseudonymous correspondent at a maximum-security prison in central California, has gone another round in our poetry war with "Once Again", a response to my poem "A Difference of Opinion", which was itself inspired by Stephen Dobyns' "Artistic Matters" from his 1996 book Common Carnage. And the beat goes on...A Difference of Opinionby Jendi Reiter (1996)Once there was only the mudand one-celled things with just enough     purpo seinternal to themselves to be alive,but too soft to fossilize, leaving no traceof themselves in history except the evolved     patt ernfor whose sake billions of them were flung away     by naturelike soldiers or confetti.Finally the moment camewhen they began to prey upon one another,cell against cell, and only thendid nature sit back in satisfactionto watch the sharp beauty of spikes grow,the monumental callousness of armor,the cunning of hooks, all the h...

Book Notes: Couldn't Keep It to Myself
2007-11-05 10:44:00
Bestselling author Wally Lamb led me to some crucial insights about self-acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude with his novels She's Come Undone and I Know This Much Is True. Now, in his role as writing workshop leader at a women's prison, he's empowered some forgotten and outcast members of our society to understand how they became who they are, and to make the rest of us recognize our common humanity. Couldn't Keep It to Myself is the first collection of autobiographical essays by Lamb's students at York Correctional Institution in Connecticut. The sequel, I'll Fly Away, was just released.Emotionally, this book is a hard read because of the numbing similarity of their traumatic pasts. The women's voices, however, are fresh and individual, even humorous at times. Childhood sexual abuse is virtually universal, and the pattern is often repeated in their adult relationships. Several of the authors finally struck back against men who were abusi...
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Secular Film and the Sublime
2007-11-03 11:49:00
Two films I saw this week have something to teach Christian artists about communicating the sublime. Neither was particularly deep, though one had pretensions in that direction. Both were about 40 minutes too long, the lack of character development eventually making me lose interest in pure visual sensation, but what a sensation it was. Most relationship-driven movies I've seen are directed like large-screen television shows, while the action movies are like video games, with lots of "shock and awe" but little attention to beauty. Across the Universe, the Beatles musical directed by Julie Taymor, is one of the few that sensually savors the visual medium and delights in exploring its extreme capabilities. So much so, in fact, that I was seduced by the experience of the film, and only afterward felt slightly dirty upon realizing what a work of propaganda it was. For one thing, drug use is shown in a wholly positive light. No one gets addicted, has a bad ...
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Signs of the Apocalypse: Divorce Expo
2007-10-29 12:14:00
An event held this past weekend in Austria suggests that none of life's milestones are safe from commercial exploitation. From BBC News: Austria is to host the world's first "divorce fair" this month, aimed at helping couples untie the knot as painlessly as possible. The event, taking place in Vienna, then Linz and Graz, will allow would-be divorcees to consult lawyers about their rights and seek advice. The divorce rate in Austria hit an all time high of 50% in 2006, with 66% of marriages in Vienna ending in divorce. The two-day fair is being held under the motto "New beginning".... Up to 20 exhibitors have registered so far, not only lawyers and mediators, but also estate agents, life-crisis experts, private detective firms and DNA laboratories offering paternity tests. One company will offer therapeutic package holidays for newly divorced people. There will also be a series of lectures on subjects like how divorce affects children and coping as a single parent. I say, why stop ...
More About: Divorce , Expo , Signs , Apocalypse , Divo

Drive-Thru Church
2007-10-24 18:03:00
  The ultimate in seeker-sensitive ministry! Hat tip to Church marketingsucks.com.
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Jessica Williams: "Over Easy Eggs"
2007-10-24 17:26:00
Over Easy Eggs 10/16/07; 3:46am EST the castles in my femorathey have declared war on my circulationred and blue flagsi have turned purplemy jawis falling off my headand crushing the nerves in my necklike a mother bird cooing to her chicklets' bonesmy bloodis turning to teaa few of its leaves like driftwood in my heartbeating with meas tumorsmy liver won't filtermy earsmust smell like the oceanfor my hair has turned to seaweedhumid, the brainmy noseis in my neck, toobut it's an infectious swampi want to pluck out all its black treesand feel the satisfaction of stinginglet the mucus skithe lines in my palmsare meltingon the carpetand across the roommy stomachis growing cactiand i can feel the tumbleweeds rollingrolling rollingacross the prairiethat is my membranemy pelvishas swallowed iceit is sore from impactfrom my lust for youi lie down and feel only whale harpoonsmy eyeshave forgotten my facethey feel like snorkeling gogglesthey won't be blue tomorrowwhen i look at the suni fe...
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Transcending Singularity
2007-10-18 11:41:00
Apropos of my latest post on fear of the moment, here are two essayists -- one a Chassidic scholar, the other a Christian painter -- with encouraging insights into how imagination and spirituality help us not only transcend the particularity of our lives, but actually turn it into a richer experience than that of mere undifferentiated Being.At Chabad.org, Yanki Tauber writes in his essay "Three Divine Echoes: Singularity, Plurality and Oneness": Creation, as described in the teachings of Kabbalah, is an evolution from the utterly singular to the plural and dichotomous. The entirety of existence originates as the divine yen to create -- a desire as singular as its Conceiver. But latent in this desire is also another face of the divine -- the infinite possibilities implicit in G-d's unlimited potential. Thus, the singular desire for creation gives birth to our plural world, a world whose immense detail and complexity bespeak the infinite potential of its Creator.None of this, in...
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Fear of the Moment
2007-10-16 22:36:00
  Being present in the moment is unusually difficult for me. Ever since I was a child, I've had several elaborate fantasy storylines going on in my head, into which I plunge when I'm waiting for sleep, doing routine chores or even going for a walk. Last spring, I forced myself to abandon one of these long-running daydream sagas when I realized it was draining me of interest in my real life. Inhabiting my actual existence was terrifying. I remember standing on the curb outside my house, feeling naked under the huge sky. I was a tiny point on earth that the wind could blow away. I started writing my novel as a replacement for these abandoned scenarios in which I was the heroine of a life more exciting, empowered, or romantic than any real existence could be. Daydreams, like movies and unlike life, are all "good parts" (or at least interesting parts). All my libido was being diverted into unreal experiences. Writing fiction would discipline me to empathize wi...
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Poem: "The Happiness Myth"
2007-10-13 19:25:00
Do you bite the day or does the day bite you:the sun like a gear wheel spinning with    hooked edges,the sun a flaming pizza that greases your    mouth.Tell me why you stopped drinking.Are you in the oven or did you poke the witchinto the fire with her own iron-handled    paddl e?It's not obvious that you should be sober.Happiness spins like a drug lollipop,vortex of primary paints where lick or    be lickedis only a simple choice for boys fighting.The glass of euphoria fits in the palm of    your hand,barely enough to drown your tongue-tip,too much to empty.       ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;      &n bsp;      A s for me,I now wear my whalebone stays under    my ribs,hoop skirts swishing in my womb like a   &...
More About: Site News , Poems , Book Reviews , Poem

Mark Levine Interviewed at jubilat
2007-10-12 16:22:00
Mark Levine's second poetry collection, Enola Gay, is on the short list of books that expanded my understanding of what poetry could do. His post-apocalyptic, enigmatic ima ges make sense the way a door creaking in a horror film makes sense. You don't have to know what's behind there to realize it's something scary; in fact, it's scarier because your rational mind can't define it. Some excerpts from poems in the book:from Counting the Forests...He was counting the forests. That was his plan.He carried a sack of dried fishprepared by his servant and curedin sea-salt. His servant was near; he could hearthe rasp of his servant's breath. His servant was making the vigil in a mountainsomewhere in the ice-country; and the ice-country   was vastand blue and full of death-forms. So was the forest.Here in the red forest: a forest of birds.Birds and dark water and looming red leavesbrushed with murmuring voices.They swept towards him, the voices, like  ...
More About: Book Reviews , Mark

Interpreting Scripture: A Double Standard on Marriage
2007-10-09 12:06:00
Christians holding the line against recognition of same-sex relationships claim that Bible verses on sexuality must be taken at face value. We're not allowed to point out a particular interpretation's historical track record in fostering abuse and prejudice, as evidence that it's inconsistent with the Bible's overall message of mercy, equality and nonviolence. Nor can we look to history and science to argue that the verse's "plain meaning" may represent an anachronistic reading of words that meant something different in the ancient world. Yet Christians for quite some time have taken a much more flexible, holistic, justice-based view of Bible verses on heterosexual marriage, and the sky has not fallen. Faithful GLBT Christians ask nothing more than that the church apply the same hermeneutic to them as it does to straight partnerships. There's something askew when two straight people who want to break up their family are treated more leniently than two ...
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Signs of the Apocalypse: Smack That!
2007-10-08 10:36:00
Love your enemies, do good to them that persecute you, turn the other cheek, yatta yatta yatta. Who cares what the Bible says? Just getting our children into a church building has the magical power to save their souls. Let's not scare them off with all that boring content about, like, Jesus and stuff. From Sunday's New York Times: First the percussive sounds of sniper fire and the thrill of the kill. Then the gospel of peace. Across the country, hundreds of ministers and pastors desperate to reach young congregants have drawn concern and criticism through their use of an unusual recruiting tool: the immersive and violent video game Halo....Those buying it must be 17 years old, given it is rated M for mature audiences. But that has not prevented leaders at churches and youth centers across Protestant denominations, including evangelical churches that have cautioned against violent entertainment, from holding heavily attended Halo nights and stocking their centers with multiple game...
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To Whom Does the Church Belong?
2007-10-04 19:21:00
In this post I simply want to raise some questions that I don't know how to answer. As with many of my reflections on ecclesiology these days, it's prompted by the ongoing struggle over gay rights and Biblical authority in the Anglican Communion.The obvious answer to the title question would be "Jesus".  To which a beleaguered rector or worshipper might respond, "Yes, but...could you be more specific?"In other words, when conflicting factions differ on many of their basic assumptions, it's not enough to say "we're following Jesus" or "we're following the Bible". Whose Jesus, which Bible?On a more practical level, who gets to set the direction of a particular parish? The global denomination, the country's presiding bishop, the rector, the lay members? I've experienced this conflict from both sides of the fence. Last year, when the then-minister of my Episcopal church was tugging us in a Unitarian/skeptical direction, I felt personally affronted. "...
More About: Church , The Church , Belo

Christina Askounis: "The Novice"
2007-10-02 18:14:00
From the Fall 2005 issue of Image, this restrained, lyrical story traces the bittersweet spiritual awakening of a middle-aged bachelor whose adopted daughter has decided to join a convent: IT WAS Catherine?s last night. Lawson suggested they have dinner at her favorite restaurant, a resolutely untrendy bistro where the aged waiters knew them both by name. ?Since it?s your last night,? he?d said, conscious of the theatrical cast the words seemed to give the evening. Still, it was no more than the truth. Catherine, who tonight looked so lovely, so finished in her black sleeveless dress?Catherine was leaving him. Not the right way to put it, of course. But ever since that long-ago afternoon when she had been eleven and he twenty-eight?only twenty eight!?scarcely older than she was now?he had felt she did belong to him in a way, that they belonged to each other, and now she was going, never to return.Read the whole story here.
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Judy Kronenfeld: "Spaghetti Straps"
2007-10-02 12:17:00
On my campus walk a spring effusionof spaghetti straps, and?Madonna'slegacy?the inside outed, too delicatefor the name of straps, tender, silkybra linguine, tomato-red, celery-green,slipping off creamy shoulders, ortangling fetchingly with those spaghettistraps my daughter informs me, I, as an older woman, can not wear.               ;      &nbs p;      &nb sp;    Once, unwittingly,I draped my navy blazer onthe chairback in my class; twopale pink shoulder pads ploppedup like obscene pincushionsfrom the costumer's shop, abruptlyspotlit. The student they tickled apologized, but couldn't stop laughingeach time he looked. NowI pull my jacketaround me, though it's hot,      & nbsp;               ;      &nbs p;   t...
More About: Straps , Spaghetti , Judy , Krone