The Gladstone Hotel, Shameless Magazine launch

Caucasian woman, early 20s, with long brown hair, far part, bangs swept over one eye, wearing black wharf jacket, pale blue eyes looking to the side over her high collar.

Shameless Magazine, Issue 11, Winter/Spring 2008 (Shameless Media)

Page 23:

These moments of connection inspire much of my activism, academic and artistic work, which seeks to challenge our ideas about sexiness. I was tired of never seeing sexy images of people with disabilities. So, after much thought, and encouragement from my best friend (who's an amazing photographer), we decided to change that.

Mrs. M (Maciejewski) was of no relation. She had worked with the girl's grandmother twenty years earlier in the secretarial pool of a small but successful company that sold ice to restaurants and, eventually, larger corporations and the occasional fair ground. Everyone needed ice.

Mrs. M moved into the retirement home a year after her husband died. She'd done all the cooking, all the bill keeping. But he'd done all the driving. Their car hadn't so much as left the garage for five years but should the need arise, should she, for example, need to get to the hospital, he'd argued, he was the one with the license. And he'd be damned.

Taddle Creek 10th Anniversary, The Gladstone Hotel

Caucasian woman, late 20s, wearing all black, head of brown, soft unruly curls the perfect accessory to her tidy, tight words.

Dani Couture, three time Taddle Creek contributor, reading "Atonement":

Atonement

On the side of the highway,
in August, on full stomach,
I picked the already thin
blueberry bushes clean.

And for a year afterward
the bears roamed hungry--
picked off campers in crisp red tents
as they were offered up in return.

Clipping, late for work. A few quick sips of espresso warms her belly, toasted rye and jam chilling in her palm of paper towel. The path is straight and timely to the main road but she veers, the concrete giving way to solid soil, the odd crumpled leaf, through a circle of Asian women, quipping away, wide circles rushing morning air to their lungs.

(Read one of my stories for Taddle Creek, "Bunkie.")