Visiting Artists and Writers
 Barbarba Takenaga |
 Gillian Jagger |
 Irving Petlin |
 Allison Smith |
Excerpt from November 22, 1963
by Adam Braver
Carolyn Hawkins’s brother, Aubrey Rike, who went by the name of Al, was sitting at Parkland Memorial Hospital when the motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza. As an ambulance driver for O’Neal Funeral Home, Al and his rider, Peanuts McGuire, had been at the parade route earlier, sent down to Houston and Elm to pick up a man who had suffered a seizure across from the School Book Depository. They’d taken him over to Parkland, per O’Neal’s contract with the city for ambulance services, and were standing around chatting when news of the shooting spread through the hospital almost as quickly as the president’s car arrived.
Within moments the ER was swarmed. The stink of rushing bodies. Al found himself jammed against a wall, shoved up beside an agitated policeman who kept looking down at his feet while telling him to stay put. He might be needed.
People ran chaotically. Newspapermen scurried for telephones. Elected officials milled. Congressmen. Senators. A general stood with a briefcase handcuffed to his wrists, as though he might blow the whole place to smithereens. Dallas PD. County PD. Secret Service. FBI. At least fifty people smashed right into the entrance, with a whole lot more spilling into the waiting-room area. Outside, hundreds of people crowded the police line. Men with submachine guns guarded the glass entry doors. More and more kept arriving. Not enough air to feed them all.
After about a half hour, Secret Service Agent Kellerman approached. His arms folded across his chest, crumpling his customary dark suit. Falsely composed. A bubble ready to burst. He said Mr. O’Neal would be bringing a casket down shortly and needs both Al and Peanuts to be ready to assist with the necessary details. Kellerman said to wait for O’Neal right outside the trauma room. Maybe Al heard wrong? Misunderstood the part about the casket.
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Excerpt from Transference
by Jean McGarry
The first patient of the day was eight-year-old Isabel. Isabel brought her doll, which sat in the chair opposite his. The patient sat against the wall, and told him he could look at her if he took off his glasses or looked with one eye. The doll, made of cloth, with a head but no face, was a blabbermouth, and Isabel asked him to slap her face, and if he didn’t, she’d slap his. Why would you slap my face? he asked. Because I want to, she’d say, and with that, the ritual greeting was accomplished.
Isabel’s five-year-old sister, Evelyn, was run over by a car while the family was traveling in Italy. Isabel had tossed the doll into the road because her sister had insisted on holding its free hand, and Mother was threatening to take the doll away if Isabel continued so selfish. The marriage hadn’t survived the trauma. Father wasn’t present the day of the accident. He was conducting business from the hotel, business he’d promised to forgo for the week away, but a looming worry had become a crisis. His wife knew the matter could have waited till their return, and she was proven right, as the father had explained to Dr. Broad in an early session arranged just for him. He was the one who’d gotten the referral for Isabel… To read more, see the July 2009 issue of the Yale Review
September Visiting Artists and Writers:
 Marge Piercy  Brian Belott  Anne Rochette  Ed Smith  Gregory Botts  Cole Swenson |
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
-Maya Angelou