What was the difference between the touch you gave me
and the touch you painted?
Did it not hit the same note,
the same nerve
that morning when we woke up
you coughed jumped out of bed
clothes thrown on.
You were a coat hanger with a dress dangled off of it.
Weeks later the painting, on the postcard you sent,
is it still a painting if
ink and pencil
charcoal and fiber
take me back to that morning in bed,
with you murmuring mistake
all the way down the stairs.
Image and text by Adam Strong
Winter at Seaside, by guest contributor Joanna Rose
Purgatory in Durango, CO by guest contributor Carol Fischbach
Kool Menthols & Meatball Parms. Greenwich Village, 1977
At your fourth birthday party lace dark, candlelight through holes in Chantilly lace. You and an old man standing in front of a chocolate cake, white butter cream frosting, white writing, ADAM in sugar, four candles for you, and a respectful lack of candles for him. He is old enough that you can feel the days he's lived float through him when he hugs you right there in front of the family taking pictures that you will one day create this memory from. His age, and the influence in all who has his posture, his smell, and the slow way he takes his glasses off and wipes them off with a handkerchief. This old man is related to pilgrims, the beginning of this country, and here now, on the year of the bicentennial, to you at that moment, your whole world is candle flicker through lace, old man soft broken leather hands, flashes of smiles, dots of bright light, reflected off of all the glasses in the room, the pistachio pants your mom wears, her hair up in a beehive.
Backwards Trajectory 