Category: Memoir & Fiction

Memoir & Fiction by Don Moss
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Two sepia side-by-side photographs of Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein.

DRAMA: The Tobacco Pot – A Play in One Act (1996)

SETTING: Einstein’s office at Princeton, desk, with large tobacco pot, two chairs, stacks of books and papers everywhere, half erased equations on chalkboard, Lighting slightly dimmed.

AT RISE: The two men have been life-time theoretical competitors; this competitiveness shows in all their interactions, though good naturally, as if acting out how media sometimes pits them against each other. NEILS BOHR, lost in thought, stands in profile by the desk fumbling to fill his pipe. The pipe, unfilled, unlit, he moves toward back, toward the window of the large office, walking furiously left to right, his hands clasped behind his back.

BOHR: Einstein, Einstein. [BOHR’S hands fidget with the pipe. Einstein enters stage left on tiptoe. He pauses only an instant to watch BOHR and smiles. He heads silently for the tobacco pot] Gezukenakken, pond scum. That means “pond scum” in Danish. He’s always late. Oh, Einstein! [BOHR picks up chalk, announcing as he writes] E … = … m … C … squared. [Just as EINSTEIN’S fingers eagerly touch the tobacco pot, BOHR suddenly spins round. The two men pretend to glare at each other.] Stealing from my pot again, Herr Doc-tor Albert? […]

Memoir & Fiction by Alex Sheremet
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A stylized portrait of Lord, a lilac-colored Scottish Fold with orange eyes who lived between 2010 and 2023.

Like The Last Words Of A House Cat (Lord’s Story)

After Lord had made his decision, he wished to see the world a little. One might as well, he thought. Ever since the arrival of Cookie, he felt agitated, if only with himself. Lord had never been a jealous cat, but watching King—his older brother—groom Cookie, and chase her, and beat her up, he suddenly missed the rough of King’s tongue. He missed the sound of Dad cleaning loosened hair. He missed how Mom would separate them, for he never took this as a punishment. After all, Lord loved to think, and right now, the season was pensive. Yes, summer was ongoing, but the longest day was long behind, and each sunrise felt a little colder. It would soon be Grandmother’s birthday. Had it really been that long? A cat uses up its days so quickly, though there is still so much to do. Lord understood he would not have time to start anything new, but why, he wondered, is everyone obsessed only with beginnings? His mind was of one project—one map—and he intended to complete it. […]

Memoir & Fiction by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized cartoon image of a blonde man of uncertain ethnic background in sunglasses, as if overlooking a physical education class.

BOY’S MEMOIR: Physical Education

Let’s call him LJ. He was tall and pale and kept his blonde hair buzz-cut. Stubble-faced, stud earrings, early to mid-thirties. His constant white t-shirts (maybe just the one, worn every day), as well as the basketball shorts, were always oversized, which made him seem larger than he already was to us children. He hid his eyes behind black shades and his voice was quiet, grumbling from low registers.

We were instructed to sit in an even block, straight-rowed, as he sat atop a red rubber ball and waited for chatter to die. His patience was overpowering, and instructive in how much a man could relate of himself without a word or noticeable motion. He’d sit there, hands folded together, until we were cowed, and when all was noiseless save for the dim sounds of the surrounding neighborhood floating over elementary barriers, some untraceable counter inside him would finally ding and he’d say, sans inflection: “Three laps.”

And so we’d run. There was a huge chalk-drawn ring by the space LJ had us congregate and we’d circle that however many times he’d arbitrarily declare. When that was done, and we were once more before him, gasping on the block, he wasted no time in saying: “Twenty-five jumping-jacks.” […]

Memoir & Fiction by Ezekiel Yu
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A stylized image of a sepia-toned, short-haired woman looking down in thought, ostensibly depicting the prostitute in Ezekiel Yu's short story, "A Separate Pace".

SHORT STORY: At A Separate Pace

When she arrived, there was some confusion over the identity of her client, as there was another man at the hotel bar, beside a few others, who met her gaze and made a small gesture at the empty seat beside him. He was older, maybe in his early-to-mid fifties, with greying hair and eyes the color of old dollar bills; and since she was used to seeing men who looked like that, she smiled and waved, depositing herself on the chair without a thought.

He asked her what she wanted to drink and she said, “Gin and tonic, please,” and to the nearby bartender he replicated the same, almost dismissive, gesture he’d made earlier to indicate the empty seat. They resumed conversation, with the man even laying a proprietary hand on her bare shoulder in the midst of complimenting the dress. But when several minutes had passed, the man asked for her name, and she knew some misunderstanding on her part had occurred. […]

Memoir & Fiction by Ezekiel Yu
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The white scorpion in Barstow, California, as imagined by poet and critic Ezekiel Yu when recalling his childhood.

MEMOIR: A White Scorpion In Barstow, California

Our house in Barstow, California was small for a family of seven but its backyard was quite sizable, except there was no grass. It was all sand, like the desert that surrounded us, and featureless save for a pit in the center packed with stones. We didn’t really play in the backyard, even when we had friends over, because there was nothing to do there and it was always hot. Barstow is a small city scoured by the Mojave sun and for the year we lived there I quickly learned that I was not one for deserts and never would be. Nor was I one for small cities. Certainly not this one, full of old buildings, lean against their own shadows, and people just about as destitute as we were, who regarded us with mean amusement and called us names.

I don’t recall them with hatred because I know that there weren’t many who looked like us in that city and it’s easy to react harshly to the unfamiliar face. Even then I was more confused that they’d treat with such cruelty those who were clearly afraid of their own strangeness and more a threat to themselves than others. No hatred, but I recall them (and they were mostly other children) not without certain pangs: walking home from school, many would jeer at us in mock-Chinese, which we didn’t speak, and on the playground some would stretch their eyes out narrowly enough so as to not resemble a human face at all. […]

Memoir & Fiction by Don Moss
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A mirrored image of a child jumping down a staircase in post-impressionist style, perhaps taking place in the 1960s.

SHORT STORY: Don Moss’s “Down The Stairs”

Our large farmhouse had an oak staircase that descended eight or nine feet to the landing, then offered five steps to the right and left, to the dining room and to the parlor, respectively. At age four or five, I would stare down to the landing and imagine a perfect leap to the precise center of the landing, absorbing the fall with no harm to body or to the parquet oak landing. Since the basement stairs were directly beneath this stairwell, I just knew any imperfection in the act would send one through the landing to the basement and to my demise. That last detail was of no interest, simply the consequence of imperfection. This fantasy felt more like a message built into the stairway and landing itself.

Evidence of my never attempting the jump is the fact that I sit, seventy-some years later, now writing these words. I was neither gifted with any useful athletic abilities, nor plagued with innate daring to attempt such a stunt. I didn’t take the fantasy literally, even years before I knew of such a word as literal. The image of the stairs, leap, and perfect landing did not abandon me. The image did now and then vanish, drifting below conscious recall. […]

Memoir & Fiction by Ezekiel Yu
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Two AI-generated images of East Asian men smoking cigarettes, done in a neo-Impressionist style.

In Memoriam: Carcinogens and the Common Isopod

I must have been younger than ten. These were the days of unanswered questions and rooms that dwindled in size and quantity the more we were tossed about the Greater Los Angeles Area. My father had lost his job, again, and I’d forgotten what he was doing for money when the man with the cigarette arrived on our door.

Was I home alone with my father, or were my mother and other siblings with us? It shouldn’t be difficult to remember, for we were always together, separated only by school or the occasional extracurricular activity, but for whatever reason, I see just my father and me in our cramped second-level apartment. It was summer, perhaps, as the air conditioner was on, although inconstant, and I can feel the sweaty doze of day when sunlight fans downward and blanches one’s musings, with nothing to do but await my older self’s dubious remembrance. […]