My wife is five months pregnant with our first child and all she wants to eat is oyster crackers. She doesn’t want clam chowder or chicken noodle soup to drop them into but only these dime-sized wafers of salt and flour. She reaches into the bag, pulls out a handful, stuffs them in her mouth. The pregnancy has changed her, turned her into a different woman. When I mention this to my friend, a man three-kids deep, he smiles, says, man, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

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)