"Between Here and Here" by Amy Bloom

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"I had always planned to kill my father. When I was ten, I drew a picture of a grave with 'Alvin Lowald' on the tombstone, on the wall behind my dresser. From time to time I would add a spray of weeds or a creeping vine. By the time I was in junior high, there were trees hung with kudzu, cracks in the granite, and a few dark daisies springing up. Once, when my mother wouldn’t let me ride my bike into town, I wrote 'Peggy Lowald is a fat stupid cow' behind the dresser, but I went back the same day and scribbled over it with black Magic Marker because most of the time I did love my mother and I knew she loved me. The whole family knew that my mother’s feelings were Sensitive and Easily Hurt. My father said so, all the time. My father’s feelings were also sensitive, but not in a way that I understood the word, at ten; it might be more accurate to say that he was extremely responsive. My brother, Andy, drew cartoon weather maps of my father’s feelings: dark clouds of I Hate You, giving way to the sleet of Who Are You, pierced by bolts of Black Rage.

Most of the mothers in our neighborhood were housewives, like my mother. But my mother was also a very good cook and a very accomplished hostess and even if the things she made and the way she entertained is not how I would have done it (red, white, and blue frilled toothpicks in lamb sausage pigs in blankets on the Fourth of July, trays of deviled eggs and oeufs en gelée—with tiny tulips of chive and egg yolk decorating each oeuf—to celebrate spring)."

"Between Here and Here," a short story by the incomparable Amy Bloom, is continued in Narrative Magazine (Winter 2010). The story is from Amy Bloom’s most recent story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Random House, 2010).

"A Crossing" by George David Clark

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"Giant salamanders, blue-black and purple-black, lie
along the bottom of this stream in Northern China —

I cannot even balance the place’s name on my tongue.
They lie like bruises in the stone-strewn pools, . . ."

"A Crossing," a poem by George David Clark, is continued in Linebreak (January 12, 2010).

Two poems by Jason Heroux and a film by Woody Allen

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"Windows" and "Brief Case" by Jason Heroux (prose poems from his chapbook Leaving the Road, Mercutio Press, 2003)

Match Point, written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers as Chris Wilton, Emily Mortimer as Chloe Hewett Wilton, Matthew Goode as Tom Hewett, Brian Cox and Penelope Wilton as Alec and Eleanor Hewett, and Scarlett Johansson as Nola Rice.

(There are also some very talented supporting actors including Margaret Tyzack as Betty Eastby, Ewen Bremner as Inspector Dowd, James Nesbitt as Detective Banner, and Rupert Penry-Jones, who played Captain Wentworth in the BBC version of Persuasion, as Chris's friend and former tennis rival.)

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

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Bel Canto, a novel by Ann Patchett (HarperCollins: New York, 2001).

Cherry Blossoms

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Kirschblüten - Hanami (English title: Cherry Blossoms, French
title: Un Rêve japonais), in German, written and directed by
Doris Dörrie and starring Elmar Wepper and Hannelore Elsner as Rudi and Trudi Angermeier, Aya Irizuki as Yu, Maximilian Brückner as Karl Angermeier, Nadja Uhl as Franzi, Birgit Minichmayr as Karolin Angermeier, and Felix Eitner and Floriane Daniel as Klaus and Emma Angermeier.

Labor Day

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Labor Day, a novel by Joyce Maynard (William Morrow/HarperCollins: New York, 2009).

There seemed to be a couple of very tiny continuity goofs here: a maternal grandmother dies when the boy is old enough to remember, leaving his mother an orphan (49-50), then had died "so long before," when he was at least too young to remember (146); a man is shirtless (151), then wearing a shirt (154).

I don't know why I get so distracted by such tiny details, but they pull me right out of the story. (This reminded me of a 12/02/2009 Publishers Weekly blog post by Elizabeth Bluemle, in which she said that reading the acknowledgments page(s) in a novel kick her "right out of the world of the story and its magic.") It's so difficult to maintain a reader's suspension of disbelief.

But beyond that, I ended up putting aside the other books I was reading after the first two pages of this one.

Poetry by Sandra Beasley

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"Unit of Measure" by Sandra Beasley (poem from Poetry, July/August 2009; reprinted at Poetry Daily on July 7, 2009)