Howard Berelson is a graphic artist and poet who in his eighth decade fills these pages with memoir, poems and digital images as he unflinchingly remembers and examines his youth, revisits themes of family, the authentically imperfect family most of us had in one form or another, recalls his firefighter father who was half hero, half stranger and discovers his mother's poetry and rediscovers her paintings, understanding better from where his own creativity may have come. His poems take us from the whimsical to the profound, from his childhood passion for baseball trading cards to domestic betrayal to the recent pandemic. Berelson writes, some people I met along the way changed my life. Their life's journey filled with pain produced images that informed me of my own pain....and so when I moved out of the loft, I left the illusion of high romance for the comfort of hot water, a working toilet, a large bath tub, a wood burning fireplace and the person behind the mask—I would begin to find.
-Ellen June Wright is a former language arts educator who consulted on guides for three PBS poetry series. Her work has been featured by Verse Daily, Rappahannock Review, The Good Life Review, The Closed Eye Open, Passengers Journal, Scoundrel Times and Banyan Review. She is a Cave Canem and Hurston/Wright alumna and a 2021 and 2022 Pushcart Prize nominee. She currently lives in Hackensack, New Jersey and is working on her first collection of poems. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @ Ellen June Writes.
