“There is no ‘too fat,’ ‘too wrinkled,’ ‘too old,’ or ‘too’ anything in Life Drawing. I gathered from her explanation that, to the student, bodies are nothing more than still lifes, like flowers,…

“The children keep asking where/the other children are. Their mothers won’t say/phony life-vests pulled them toward the bottom/while breakers drove them into jagged cliffs./Tourists on their morning walk won’t see/the skins of boats…

“On arrival, we finally struggled through Security, collected our goody bags (Kyrgyz flag, orange baseball cap, four glowing sticks to wave, programme of events), and took our seats in the stadium. We had…

“Like my grandfather’s dairy cows, sheep are the shepherd’s livelihood. But they are also extended family. Sheep belong to the shepherd and there is intimacy created by that kind of ownership. Many of us…

“I know that, for many, this season brings deep melancholy or worse. Being mindful of that fact, may I suggest that if you know someone who is alone at this time of year,…

“Indeed, the location wasn’t promising, competing for space with dozens of passers-by, including a corsage-bedecked nun (with a beard) and a short-legged dog who posed atop a three-foot pedestal for photographs. Very quickly,…

“Whether there was a neuron misfiring in my brain, a synaptic scramble (which I’m willing to this day to acknowledge as a distinct possibility), or whether what occurred was an aspect of reality,…

“No matter what is going on between people, it is always a relationship—nothing happens unless the other person is there with his or her energy. No anger, no harmony, no conflict, no love. No nothing.…

“The tongue is in the eye./It speaks through glints and blinks,/Mama after the stroke,/speechless./One blink meant ‘yes,’/two a ‘no.’/I wanted to read her mind/when that gaze overtook her./In the whites of those fixed…

“You should do something brilliant before it’s too late.”—Mark Kershaw Addison By Mark Kershaw ATLANTA Georgia—(Weekly Hubris)—December 2018—Mark Addison Kershaw says that his influences include James Thurber, Jean-Jacques Sempé, Charles Schultz, Berke Breathed, and…