In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

W I L L I A M M AT T H E W S The Attic, the House People are history but their belongings stay around. Here Aunt Vivian looks like a balloon. She popped. She’s dead. The picture stays on, though, her stretched thin smile survived her all this while, became her legacy. The whole attic stinks of permanence. Up here my ancestry, downstairs my tomb in preparation. Already here some dust has settled on me: a baby carriage where my son and then my cat slept while I aged, a baseball glove, some letters. What’s mine downstairs will soon be here, joining the majority. The Late 1950s and the 1960s ❚ 13 It only waits down there in order to be me; my favorite chair stands stuffed, smug as a monument, gravely brown in its corner about to inflate itself for the ascent. The Risk Waking up in the tawdry truth like an old whore in her underwear: no gaud, no carillon, no life I’ll never lead. One foot down before the other. Today I won’t ask anyone to love me. 14 ❚ The Late 1950s and the 1960s ...

Share