Swamp Lily Review

Playwright Tony Kushner: An Interview

Editor — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:58:01 +0000

By Jan Rider Newman - Tony Kushner was born in Manhattan to William Kushner and Sylvia Deutscher Kushner. His father, who died March 11, 2012, was a clarinetist and conductor. Kushner’s mother, who died in 1990, played bassoon and acted in Lake Charles, Louisiana, theaters after the family moved to Lake Charles in the early [...]

Frank DiCesare, Photographer

Editor — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:52:52 +0000

* Green Anole Perched on a Purslane “Green Anole Perched on a Purslane” * Pistols Along the I-10 Bridge “Pistols Along the I-10 Bridge” = –* HOME

The Birth of Me and the B-53

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 20:20:42 +0000

Fissile material, a frangible aluminum honeycomb nose and a two stage white radiation implosion. Eight thousand promissory pounds of warhead built to destroy the litany of lives found in bunkers, hillsides and fields as I stirred in my mother’s womb– kicking each rib, my fetal fists pressed against placental walls. I caused my mother’s feet [...]

My Father’s Voice

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:41:27 +0000

Long before his business bellied-up or his heart failed and he suffered a stroke, he sang, his soothing tenor calming whatever tempest stirred his young daughter. He sang in the choir at St. Leo the Great —a gothic New Orleans church with its own outdoor grotto. His voice soloed at times, until a quarrel with [...]

Cajun Paradise

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:40:03 +0000

Vanilla angles tether the sky, phosphorus dips, and gray layers like smoke or wisps of spider veins in marble: a landscape of marshes, the Cajun prairies. A silver fen, murk beneath the ashen dale, yet sunshine’s glimmer waxes the streams and the puffed thistles’ purple blossom in this landscape of loss and beauty—the vanishing coast [...]

The Batture

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:38:21 +0000

“The Mississippi never lies at rest. It roils. . .. It moves south in layers and whorls, like an uncoiling rope. . ..” —John M. Barry, Rising Tide Never a steady velocity, like life’s rough courses, the river rises each spring, races downstream toward New Orleans and the Gulf. Awakened with the surge of melted snow, [...]

I-20

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:35:06 +0000

At night I walk out to the interstate. Bright lights pass before me like shooting stars. So many of them flying by, they could be like souls, if you think like that. And I do. A long time I stand in the roadside margin, where no one sees me, shadowed by Louisiana pines. Perhaps this [...]

An Unleavened Landscape

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:33:39 +0000

The sky remained untouched in our shared room. My sister and I dreamed of mountains, apexes, peaks, points of elevation, the Alps, trips to Tibet would get us closer to the azure, to the cerulean tactile sky a soft flannel of untethered buttermilk clouds on the verge of curdling. - Our city, flat, without crescendo [...]

The Burdened Air

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:31:58 +0000

While crosses burned, fathers left. Mothers nailed windows shut to keep away the insidious. Bodies floated before being found. No left turns were allowed. Vows were exchanged and broken. Coasts dissipated and fragmented. Crows flew carrying crowns and magpies followed. Oaks sprawled and nearly genuflected a century of worship near the bluffs. The oranges ripened [...]

Make a Gourmet Meal of Your Feelings

Editor — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 19:29:48 +0000

Start with your anxieties: like sugar, they’re addictive, make great appetizers. Crunchy, they pair well with bitter anger - (skip the indigestible hearts). Move on to a sublime sorbet of obsession, tart and sweet. Next, a salad with croutons, - savory bits of joy and lust and hope atop your mixed emotions. Then, a soup: [...]