James Hoch

I was a wiry, spike-haired, nineteen year old, hanging out in Philly, places like Bacchanal, Dobbs, Franks, when I walked into a used bookstore on South Street. A kid from Jersey, I had an idea that some lyrics I was writing for a band were probably not going to cut it in the latest post-punk […]

Years later, driving down Hwy 741, fields of white, thickets of fog, my car a mumbled prayer in the gauze, a sleigh, black and Amish, lefts onto the road, its horse harnessed and thudding on, its hooves muffled against the snow. A man staring forward holds the reins steady, steady. I gear down, the engine […]

It’s possible Whitman meant the sudden movement of the universe, more commonly used to describe the phenomenon of flux as when a shift in a single cell’s division alters pupa and the suddenly bright alarm of a butterfly anoints the end of a branch. Or perhaps it was reflecting life’s stasis, the material of the […]