Mark O’Brien’s Days

Mark O’Brien spends virtually every moment of every day encased in an iron lung in a room eleven feet wide and twenty feet long and seven and a half feet high.

Out Of The Psychedelic Closet

Last spring, I celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of the greatest turning point in my life. In April 1970, at the age of twenty-three, I found myself climbing the western slope of the Mount of Olives, facing Jerusalem and the Dome of the Rock.

Where The Parking Lot Is Now

I wondered how I’d feel when the place was gone. It would stay alive in my memory, but I couldn’t take much comfort from that. Memories we’re sure are indelible — how long do they really last?

No One Said How It Would Be

My mother’s hair turned in two weeks from chestnut, as she called it, to shocking white. “I am shocking white,” she said that morning when I came into the kitchen, awakened by the smell of toast.

Warm Regards

Three-year-old Jersey Lem leaned forward and rested his chin on his tan, plump forearms, which bridged the handlebars of his tricycle. There was an invisible force field that ran between the last square of concrete sidewalk and the driveway of the house next door.

The Bath

Light Polarized, Pored Over

Resurrection

Black Birch