Doing Good

WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT THIS until last week. The school didn't tell Sara, and she didn't care much about it.

A Defibrillator Of A Letter

GOTTA COME BACK TO LIFE and make this happen.

Red River

I Will Deliver, Mr. Junker

MANY THANKS TO ZYZZYVA founding editor Howard Junker for the recognition by putting my work alongside those of America's best writers in his anthology Strange Attraction: The Best of Ten Years of ZYZZYVA.  That faith is never forgotten even after all these years, Mr. Junker, and I will deliver on it as I face the task of writing more squarely. From Ellyn Maybe of Los Angeles View: “Strange Attraction deserves a place on every reader’s shelf.” 

You Read It Here First

IF LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONS, make lemonade. Enjoy it until you've had your fill, then sell the leftover.  Here is a preview of what's in Tales of the Toddy Tapper and Other Narrative Poems.

Feeding Frenzy

THIS POEM AND TWO others appeared in the Spring 1991 issue of ZYZZYVA, along with Philip Levine's "Gin" and Elizabeth Tallent's "Black Dress" which are also included in the anthology Strange Attraction: The Best of Ten Years of ZYZZYVA.

Little Woman: Sara At 13

Where To Find Pho In Morris County

WHEN I WAS NEW in Hopatcong and had a craving for pho, I used to drive forty miles to the only Vietnamese restaurant I knew this side of the Hudson: Pho Thanh Hoai in Jersey City.  But not anymore. As I became familiar with northwest Jersey and learned about its digs, I eventually discovered a bunch of Vietnamese restaurants right up my alley. Too bad the nearest one is vegetarian, but the next closest and best thing, TOPO, which stands for "the old post office," (what the building it occupies used to be) has a huge menu that is Pan Asian. And it is not even in Morris county. TOPO is in neighboring Warren county, in a little town called Hackettstown which is home to Centenary College and is the western terminus of the Montclair-Boonton and Morristown rail lines from Manhattan. This town has sure piqued my interest, and I am sure to explore it further in the days to come.

Loving Hut (Vegetarian)

538 State Route 10,

Ledgewood, NJ 07852

(862) 251-4611

TOPO (The Old Post Office)

218 Main Street

Hackettstown, NJ 07840

(908) 850-5888

Saigon Pho

744 U.S. 46

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 794-4632

Pho Thanh Huong

73 New Road

Parsippany, NJ 07054

(973) 521-9900

Lemongrass

1729 Route 10 East
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 998-6303

Viet Ai
189 Ridgedale Avenue
Florham Park, NJ 07932
(973) 410-9400

Middle School

FRANK SANSIVIERI Intermediate School 73, Maspeth.

In Memoriam

TODAY MARKS THE 10TH death anniversary of friend and neurologist Tom McNorton, founder of Hawaii Center for Sleep Medicine and former Ateneo biology classmate. He and his brother Mike were my mother's special guests in Pinamalayan in the mid-70s, eating native chicken butchered by late cousin Ernesto (Is that cat?), snorkeling rocky Pili's reef with bloody soles, telling cousin Bong to turn his jeep's engine off and economize on gas as we drove downhill to a fishpond in Matulatula, giving up on climbing the "stairway to heaven" at the base of a hill in Pola, puking on that cramped jeepney ride through winding roads going to Puerto Galera. Last time I saw him was in the early 90s at a dinner of chicken papaya prepared by his wife Rose in their house in Kailua. He bade me take $300 to help me get established in Honolulu, but it didn't work out and I haven't paid him back. Godspeed, Mick!

Tom (holding a Polaroid photo) with brothers Chris and Mike in Fraser, Michigan

Mililani, Hawaii