Pete Howard works as an adjunct English instructor, a musician, a writer, and a house painter.
At this late stage If the shoe fits Buy it. For comfort is harder to find And a little jig Can jar the memory To green fields and pop flies And star flecks of first love. Maybe even buy a second pair (the first you might yet outwear) So you won’t lose pace And become trampled In the long procession To that promised playground. But maybe not. Double vision is
Herbie was a slow, heavy, dark-skinned man who kept himself clean and well-groomed. In the summer when the weather was warm, he dressed in cotton short sleeves and plaid Bermuda shorts, and he always carried a white handkerchief to clean his wire-rim glasses or wipe away the beads that constantly reformed at the end of his large nose and hung upon the thick, black, cropped hairs of his nostrils. Mostly, he worked in
Bathroom, Restroom, Lavatory, The Facilities, The John, The Loo, Little Girl’s Room, The Latrine, The Crapper. . . . Why are there so many different names for this common place that all humans use regularly? At some time in the past a bathroom was just that – a room that contained a bathtub, which was the centerpiece, the dominant structure, maybe the only structure. The process of bathing was long
“There’s beggary in the love that can be reckoned.” –from Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra Parents have always worried about their kids going on dates. Mothers, like those haggy, clingy caricatures in the Old Spice commercials, suffer much anxiety at the prospect of losing their baby boy to the wiles of some teenage vixen. Meanwhile, fathers are filled with a mixture of fear and anger as they imagine their daughters being
In response to America’s continued lackluster performance on international standardized tests, along with stagnant growth here at home among the lower socioeconomic groups, the deep thinkers in public education press for more and more testing in our schools as a means of addressing the problem. In some ways the system can be likened to parents who just can’t accept that their kid isn’t the smartest in the class anymore. It
Ever since “liberal” became a bad word in America, there has been a growing tendency to pass judgment on other people by using this four-word zinger: “Everybody has a choice.” This is to say that no matter what situation one finds oneself in, there is always a right or wrong response, and if one chooses the wrong response, then, well, that person must take responsibility for his or her actions.
