of the St. Petersburg Municipal Golf Course, in the moment before your heart stopped, did you think of me, your only son, or my mother, the woman you moved to Florida with, or my sister, the daughter you disowned when she married a black man? Or maybe you thought of your new wife, new daughter, new life. Did any of us cross your mind, Dad? Or were you only thinking of the proper way to drop the white ball into that hole, of the distance between one spot and the next?

Steve Cushman

earned an MA degree from Hollins University and an MFA from UNC-Greensboro. He is the author of four books of fiction, including the 2004 Novello Literary Award-winning novel Portisville, and most recently the novel Hopscotch. His first full-length poetry collection, How Birds Fly, is the winner of the 2018 Lena Shull Book Award. After working as an X-ray Technologist for twenty years, Cushman now works in the IT Department at Moses Cone Memorial Hospital, and lives with his family in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Author’s website: http://www.stevecushman.net/index.htm

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Hospital Poet Sees the Stories in Everything, article by Jeri Rowe in News & Record (26 January 2014)