New Story

My short story “The Cloakroom” is included in the current issue of Pennsylvania Literary Journal. Here’s how the story opens:

At Edgedale High School Miss Elizabeth Graves was the only teacher with glamour. To have glamour in the early Fifties was to resemble cover girls like Jinx Falkenberg or Hollywood stars like Merle Oberon. Miss Graves’s glamour centered on her mouth, full lips glistening with deep red lipstick, perfect white teeth gleaming an Ipana smile. Black ringlets circled an oval face, and rouge highlighted prominent cheekbones. Her eyes were a laughing green, and smile lines creased her otherwise clear skin. She wore form-fitting jerseys or sweaters that outlined her small breasts, and in warm weather a peasant blouse revealed a hint of cleavage. Her long shapely fingers often gracefully flew about her, accentuating her dramatic reading from our literature textbook, and her nails were always elegantly manicured. The seams of her dark-toned nylons were always aligned straight down her calves when she stood while writing on the blackboard. We also saw a lot of her legs when she read to us while she perched on the front of her desk, her skirt drawn up to just above her knees.

Here’s the link to the PLJ web site if you’d like to check out the contents of the issue and, maybe, order a copy:

http://sites.google.com/site/pennsylvaniajournal/Home/winter-2010-issue-1