Deception

by Sally Wright

The snow-packed ground under the towering Bavarian forest

Looks like chocolate chip ice cream, sprinkled with pine nut jimmies.

Ascending this ancient, decadent road,

I feel a need to scoop up some speckled congelation

To make sure I am not hallucinating.

Excerpt from In-class Writing Exercise

by Sally Hirsch-Dickinson

"I wanted to get my heart back and give it right this time. Too late, though. Too many pieces, too widely scattered, too cheaply offered, too dearly lost. And so I’d left myself only to breathe, ticking my breaths away one at a time wondering how many I had left in this place, when I was going to leave, and wondering why I hadn’t already. I needed to pull myself back into some sort of wholeness but I’d lost the ability to see the contours of what I thought I was or had been. I’d managed somehow to test myself and my limits by blowing through them and diving past them only to realize too late that I lived by those rules for a reason – so as not to lose sight of myself."