Creative Nonfiction

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Hangers

By Jon Eptsein

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“Can we make one more stop?” Kelly says.

It’s my understanding that, after an hour at Costco, one is expected to do nothing more than unload the car and take a nap.

“Sure,” I say, knowing any protest will be futile. “Where to?” I ask.

“I need some hangers from Bed & Bath,” she says.

You gotta be kidding me, we got hangers up the wazoo, I think. “Okay,” I say.

We’re coming down Canoga Avenue. The car loaded to capacity with TP, paper towels, and kitchen products purchased in bulk. I pull into the parking lot at Victory. 

Pre-Super-Bowl-Sunday business is brisk. Cars and people everywhere. Petco, Pier One, Bed Bath & Beyond, and BevMo!; parking, schlepping, and shopping.

I would have loved to have shopped at a place called BevMo! when I was drinking. A name so user-friendly. As efficient as stamping “Standard” on a man’s urinal.

I’m about to pull into a spot near the exit, and Kelly says, “Oh, up there, honey,” pointing like a weather vane. “By the front door,” she says, “that black Escalade’s about to leave.”

I cringe. I hate holding up cars behind me while waiting for a spot with my signal blinking. I’m scarred by my father’s vehicular impatience. Taught early that impeding parking-lot flow is a sin worse than getting a “C” on a report card. “Okay,” I say and creep closer to the oversized SUV backing out.

I park and say, “Do you mind if I wait here?”

“Sure, baby,” she says in a tone acknowledging my husbandly duties thus far tallied. “I shouldn’t be long,” she says.

“Don’t worry about me,” I say. “I’m going to put the seat back and close my eyes.”

Kelly leaves. I lower the windows, recline the seat, and cover my face with a newspaper.

It’s a warm Saturday afternoon in Canoga Park and the sun rays coming in the car feel good. What could be a better time to rest while most are scurrying about getting ready for the big game?

But I can’t settle. I’m being bombarded by loud rap music. Where is that coming from, I wonder and strain up to look. I see in my rearview a faded, red Ford Explorer with numerous white cut-out family decals on the tinted rear window and small arms dangling out the sides. The entire affair is vibrating.

The thumping base line and angry lyrics will make it impossible to get any shuteye. I become more concerned about the young children being held hostage inside.

So be it, I think and raise my seat back up. I watch the foot traffic moving to and fro through the large automatic glass doors at the BevMo! entrance.

A tall, blond, athletic-looking man with two small children in tow catches my eye. He’s the type that got all the girls in high school. Probably played varsity ball. A starter, no doubt, whose moved on in his years. He’s cut like a Greek God, is wearing a thin tank top, baseball cap turned backward, has a thick handlebar mustache, and chiseled jaw.

Probably a craftsman, I think.

A chubby stock clerk dressed in his red BevMo! polo shirt is bringing up the rear with a keg of beer on a dolly. The silver drum is labeled “Anchor Steam.”

Boy, I used to love that brew, I remember. I’ve purchased countless four-packs back in the day but never knew it was sold in a keg. Not that that would have mattered. I would still have run out sooner than expected, nor would have appreciated its freshness.

“Over there at the end,” the man says to the clerk, pointing in the distance. His two blond kids are fascinated by the large silver barrel balancing on the green dolly. “It’s the large white pickup at the end with the ladders,” the man says.

Then a delicate flower exits through the sliding doors. She’s Asian. I imagine her fragile but decisive. She appears well-put-together with skin that resembles custard-colored porcelain. She’s clutching a narrow brown paper bag to her chest. I presume it’s an expensive bottle of wine by the way she grips it.

I imagined her sipping the fine vintage from a cut-crystal glass held in her long fingers with manicured French nails. The thought reminds me of the iridescent humming bird extracting pollen from the trumpet flower vine in our front yard earlier in the morning when I went to get the paper.

She clicks her key thingamajig in the hand clutching the bottle neck. The horn in the dated Honda parked next to me chirps.

The petite woman is less than ten feet away. A closer look at her face and I can see her life has not been so easy and she’s older than I guessed. Although still rather fragile, I suspect she’s sustained more than one beating throughout her life.

I’m saddened. It becomes apparent her lineage is less than that of a dynasty, and she’s likely the daughter of oppressed, working-class factory parents.

She opens her car door and our eyes meet. I feel a kinship to the path she’s walked and to the relief she’ll receive from the fermented or distilled liquid contained in the bottle pressed to her chest.

The rap music continues, and Kelly returns with a fifty-count box of fancy hangers, and gets in the car. “Hi, baby,” she says.

I start the car and ask, “Home?”

Jon Epstien is  a contributor to The Judean and a member of The Los Angeles Poets and Writers Collective.  His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Forge, the Pierce College Voices Collective, Out On The Stoop, Poetic Diversity, and Poetry Superhighway. After a failed education, and fourteen years of dead end jobs and drug related crime, Epstein found sobriety. Today, he shares a life with his wife Kelly of 25 years in San Fernando Valley, California, and remains sober and active in a Twelve Step program, twenty six years and counting.

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Secrets

By Grant Flint

"It is immoral not to tell."                                                                                                        

Albert Camus

"We will arrive on Tuesday," the letter says.

My first cousin, Susy, and her older sister, Willa, will be here at noon tomorrow.  I did something to Susy when she was ten and I was thirteen.

"We hope to visit with you awhile," Susy says.

 

Secrets, so many I can't talk about.  Can't deal with.

My dead son, my worst secret.  A wound each day.  Nineteen years ago.  Everything stopped nineteen years ago.  Sleep walking now, the walking dead since then.

Secrets.  Even if I could, I wouldn't share them.  Limits even for grave robbers.  Secrets which must lie silent.

Luke's terrible suitcase in the closet.  Blood red.  Beneath six heavy boxes.  Yet, when I, the father die, they will find it, my children will.  Luke's brothers, sister.

Unless I destroy it, it will be there.  They will open it.  I will be dead, they will be grieving, then they will open that suitcase.  Will smell him.  His clothes.  Which I never washed.  The sweet, sweat smell of my son who, like me, hated to bathe.  Unlike me, did not bathe, did not wash his long, oily hair, wore the same clothes for days, lay on a mattress on the floor in my room near me, the two dogs lying there with him.

His secrets in the suitcase.  Our secrets now, since his death.  His and mine.  No one else in the universe knows them.  So bad, so awful, so terrible, I hardly remember what they are. 

Broke the locked chest, savagely.  Found the journals, the hit list, the horror.

Hidden away now nineteen years later.  Nineteen years last April.  He killed her on April Fool’s Day, later jumped from the 36th floor of the hotel on Easter Sunday at sunrise, next to the church with the cross on top.  Secrets.

 

Susy will be here tomorrow.  Have to clean up the place.  Think of something to serve them.  Get my soul in order.

I suppose she went to a therapist somewhere through the years.  Who told her I was a rotten bastard, and though it wasn't rape, it was psychic rape, so call it rape.

"Call it rape," she probably said.  As though it had happened to her, the therapist.

What I did, I guess, was more like fiddle around with her private parts two or three times a day.  During those three weeks she stayed with us, her mom in the hospital.

Mostly hugging and kissing.  Which she seemed to like.  I can wish she'd told the therapist, "All that love.  I never got that again.  From anybody, guess I never will."

Wish she remembered it like that.  Through the okay though rocky marriage and her five children.  Maybe she never told anyone until she told the therapist -- 20 years after it happened.  Maybe the secret was warmer, better, more interesting before she told it.

Like a loss, after she told it.  Like something she couldn't get back.  Like she had stolen something from herself -- the secret.

The secret of how I came to her cot on those hot summer days, and she pretended to be asleep, and I pretended to take a nap with her -- would always eventually snuggle up tight next to her and softly kiss her hair and neck and say I loved her.  Over and over.

And touched her, and she told a therapist, I think, that she loved that, but the therapist was very, very angry, and told her she was re-doing the past, changing it around.

Last saw her fourteen –- no, now 15, years ago.  At my step-father's funeral.  Back their 1500 miles away for the funeral.

"And I stared at you the whole time," she could be telling herself as she journeys to my home now.  Stared at my sad, haunted face.  Stared at me all through the meal in the church basement, ignoring the cold cuts and other funeral food.

         I returned the look four times during that hour, not smiling.  Looked at her as I had so long ago, my eyes perhaps not changed at all.  Sad.  And afraid and guilty and angry, but tender, too, like someone who eats love like cake and never gets enough, never will.

My eyes questioning her, as though I would quickly apologize, if necessary, though I had forgotten nothing, remembered it as clearly as she did, had thought about it every day of my life, just as she had.  As though I had only committed one sin in my entire life, but was steadfastly damned, eternally damned, used to it.  Patient with it.

"If the world had permitted it," she maybe says to herself, "I would have left my husband and children that day, and you and I would have gone somewhere, found a refuge somewhere, out of the rain, the cold.

"You could have pretended to lie down to rest," she could say, "to take a nap.  To hide your sad, sad eyes.  I would have pretended to take a little nap with you.  I would have snuggled tight up against you, kissed your graying hair, your neck, would have whispered as though you couldn't hear. ‘I love you, love you, love you.'

"And in the gentlest way," she could say, "I would have unbuttoned the top button of your pants, slowly unzipped your fly, would have slowly, gently, reached inside, through the opening of the front of your shorts.  Would have reached inside with warm, trembling fingers, gently touched your private part, cupped it in my hand, gently, gently, and then, when at last you opened your eyes, those sad eyes of so long ago, at that first moment of how it was, exactly as it was when I was ten, I would have ripped your thing off your filthy body!  Your scream of anguish, the ultimate apology would reach straight through the rainy streets of the little town.  All the way to the church.  Waking your step-daddy in his casket.

"Rape.  Rape, indeed.  A gentle word.”


Desperate memories, secrets.  And now Susy is returning.  Tuesday.  On the visit will Susy and Willa find a way, subtly, subtly as a dream 
will they really say nothing at all? -- subtly, only a hint, a half question  --? Do I remember, they will ask gently, breath held, eyes on me – do I --remember that summer when Susy was ten when she stayed with my mom and me, stayed for three weeks, do I remember?

And, if they ask, will I hardly hear the question, not flinch, acknowledge nothing, will I be charming as can be, innocent, bland, unknowing, say, "Oh?  Maybe.  Let me think.  Three weeks?  Let’s see now -- let me think back.  Three weeks –-”

But I remember everything.  Clearly.  Not shallowly. Not as in a shallow "story."  No trick endings.  Remember it all, clearly.

Strangely, remember it clearer every day.  Maybe not every day, but every week.  Can't shake it that I must do something, what should I do?  Should I ask for forgiveness?  How many people know?  Did she tell her mother?

Would I make it worse now -- Susy and Willa -- by saying out loud that it happened?  What good would it do?  The confession only for myself, really?

What? -- I expect her to let me off?  Her saying, "Forget it, we were just kids, it meant nothing, just a kid thing, it didn't screw up my life even five percent!  Let it go, forget it, why are you embarrassing me by even bringing it up?"

Is that what she would say?  If I called her on the phone now?  What if her husband were listening?  Her children?  Why stir things up?  It was probably nothing.  I can live with it.

They came, were here yesterday.  They were here.  I went to meet them, they were old women, fat around their middles, gray-haired, fattened, ballooned, kind-faced, Willa with the same gap-toothed smile she had at twelve in the moonlight on the farm and she wanted, I wanted, to do something, in the haymow or corncrib, somewhere, and little Susy was Grandma's darling, the second Shirley Temple --

"Hello!"

"Hello!"

"Well, hello!"

I hugged them, dear first cousins, as though from another race, another continent, Midwest plump and old, how could they be so old?  I felt the conspiracy.  Between Susy, myself, Willa, Susy's whole family, the whole world, everyone, silently conspiring: we won't tell, but you did it, it wasn't horrible but very, very bad, no one remembers but you, but everyone silently remembers.

Susy, the younger, seemed older than Willa, spiritually.  Carried herself well.  No, her hair isn't gray, it is pleasantly dyed blond or strawberry.  Their faces are unlined.  Plump and Midwest-unlined.

They looked at my wonderful photo album for an hour.  There we were, young, the Depression years, happy farm-faced kids.  The parents gaunt-faced, worried.

"Do you remember that time I stayed with you and your mother?" Susy asked.  "While my mom was in the hospital?"

"Oh.  Let's see.  Oh yeah, I remember.  Two weeks, wasn't it?"

"Three weeks," she said.

The talk went on.  After a while Willa brought up the same subject.  I looked at them coolly, neither innocent nor guilty, my sins paid for over many years of remembering.

And then finally they were leaving.  The goodbyes.  The promised letters.  The hugs, the semi-kisses.  Two heavy, worn women.  Willa was innocent after six children and nine grandchildren.  Susy was not.  A nice person.  I liked her.  But she is perhaps flawed.  Flawed a bit.  Nothing to do with me. 

If Susy and I were alone for many hours someplace someday, it would come up, I'm sure.  Then I would know.  This way is even better, the way it is.  But sad, a little, at certain times.  Like a mild, but chilling breeze.

Secret.

​

Grant Flint has appeared in Story Quarterly, The Nation, The King’s English, Poetry, Weber, Amelia, Slow Trains, Common Ties, and 37 other print and online journals. He was memoir winner in the 2007 "Soul Making Literary Contest," and appeared in the 2007 "Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition Collection". He was nominated for the 2009 Pushcart Prize. 

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Folding Hot Laundry

By Conor Kelley

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FOR MY FRIEND ED

           It had been one of those winter days in Seattle when the sun doesn’t get up but people are forced to anyway.

           When I was younger, these winter months were always the hardest.  But two years of Midwestern winters at college had made me appreciate what cold really was.  Here there was no windburn, were no ice advisories, were no snow plows.  The winters over there made you feel like you were standing on the edge of the Earth, in a place not meant for humans.  Here you could live if you didn’t miss the sun too much.

           The chemotherapy made Grandpa tired.  In his seat at the head of the table, he ate slowly and was quiet most of the night.  Mostly, he kept his hooked nose in the air, trying to follow the conversation.  When I was younger, he carried these dinner table conversations.  In recent years, though, he began talking less and when he did, he sometimes forgot which jokes and stories he had already told.  When it was just us two, though, he always had new dirty jokes, stories from the Navy, and stories about the fights he had as a kid.  He saved those for me.

           When he finished his meal, I picked up my plate and walked to the head of the table.

           “Can I take that from you, Grandpa?” I asked.

           “Oh, yes, Conor.  And couldja get me another glass of ice wutter?” he said.  His New Jersey accent stayed with him, even though he had lived in Seattle for more than fifty years.

           “Of course.”

           “Thank you, sir,” he said and patted me on the back.

           I carried our plates into the kitchen.

           “He’s a charming son-of-a-gun, idn’t he?” he remarked to my parents.  He bragged about me constantly, which I found embarrassing when I was younger.  The older I got, though, the more I liked it, and the more I bragged about him, too.

           “Could you grab the ice cream from the freezer, honey?” my mom asked from the dinner table.

           “Yeah, momma,” I replied.

           “Spoons and bowls, too?”

           “Mmhmm.”

           I brought the carton of chocolate ice cream, four bowls, and four spoons to the dinner table.  I dished out the ice cream for him and my parents.  My older brother had finished his dinner early, and had gone downstairs to his room, not wanting dessert.  Usually, I didn’t have dessert either, but I would have to go back to school soon and didn’t know if I would see him again.  Of course, I thought that way each time I had left the last couple years, but the latest prognosis from his doctor hadn’t been good.

           “Let me tell you a story,” Grandpa said after a shaking bite of his ice cream.  Instinctively, I set my spoon down.  Grandpa was 88 years old now, my last grandparent, but still magnetic.  People that met him once remembered him years later.

           With a trembling, spotted hand, Grandpa brushed some of his gray hair off his forehead.  He still had quite a bit of it for his age.  “I once knew a woman long ago,” he began, “when I worked at the laundry service down in South Seattle.  I was just out of the Navy.  She was an Indian woman named Naomi.  Well, you see, Conor, this older woman Naomi, she lived on the reservation.  She wasn’t much to look at.  Rode the bus for an hour each morning and an hour back home each night.

           “I just drove the laundry truck.  But she had to fold the laundry when it came out of the dryers.  Tough life.  Just a real tough life.  Now, you’d expect her to become a mean woman.  Just a real pain in the ass.  But she was always pleasant, always talkative—and you know how much I like to talk—so we got along well.  She used to tell me about her family, and you wouldn’t believe the things they would do to her.  Her husband knocked her around, her kids left the house as soon as they turned 18; she didn’t have much to be happy about.  But there she was, every morning: ‘Hey, Ed, good morning!  How are ya, Ed?’ ‘And I’d say, ‘oh, can’t complain, can’t complain.’ Then we’d get to work.

           “Anyway, one day she comes into work, you know.  Just beaming.  Happier’n usual.  And she says to me, (Grandpa’s eyes lit up) ‘Ed, I have great news to tell you.’

           “‘Yeah?’ I says.

           “She said: ‘I got a phone call last night.  There might be oil on some land I own on the reservation.  They’re going to pay me to dig for it.’

           “And I said, ‘That’s grrreat!’ I was real happy for her.  She’s in great spirits all day, humming to herself, you know.  In 90 degree heat, folding hot laundry, smiling her head off!

           “Now a week or two goes by, and she’s still pretty chipper.  Until one morning, it’s getting close to the end of the summer, and she’s nowhere to be found.  And I’m thinking she doesn’t seem like the type to not show up.  Then it dawns on me, (here Grandpa put one of his long fingers in the air) the oil!  And sure enough, the telephone rings down by the trucks.

           “And I pick it up, you know, and it’s Naomi!  And she says, ‘Ed, you better tell the boss to find somebody to fold that damn laundry, cuz I’m done.  And I start laughing, and she’s laughing, and I ask her, ‘what are you gonna do now?’

           “She says, ‘Ed, you know what I’m gonna do?  I’m going to Hawaii.  I’m gonna be far enough away so my family can’t reach me, but close enough in case I ever miss folding hot laundry.’

           “And I never heard from her again.”

           My grandpa smiled.  The room was silent.  He reached down and scratched the head of our dog Griffey, who had been sitting by his chair, watching him throughout the entire story.  “Oh, you’re a good doggy,” he said, and patted his head firmly, a bit carelessly, with one of his bruised, spotted hands.  Griffey looked up at him and smiled the way Golden Retrievers do.

           I did see him again.  As luck would have it, or something like luck, I blew out my shoulder that spring and came back to Seattle to have surgery.  Once my shoulder healed, I did yard work at Grandpa’s house almost every day—weeding, pulling up tree stumps, trimming hedges and tree branches, things like that.  He found chores for us to do and we worked side-by-side until he got too tired.

           Grandpa’s stomach swelled up that summer, not enough to make him look fat, but enough to make him look out of proportion.  One day, he called me up and told me to come over; he had a present for me.  When I got there, he was in the living room, sitting on the couch (the davenport, he called it), with a big green garbage bag sitting in front of him on the floor.  The bag was labeled UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON MEDICAL CENTER.  He told me the bag was full of clothes that didn’t fit him anymore.  I told him I’d see if they fit later, and took the bag back home with me.

           The day before I drove cross-country back to school, I stopped by his house to say goodbye.  “Good luck this year, Conor,” he told me as he hugged me, firmer than I expected.  “You’re gonna be great.  I love you.”

           “I love you too, Grandpa,” I said, holding onto him tight.  He smelled like sawdust, like he did when I was younger.  His stubble grazed the side of my neck.  There were a couple gray patches on his chin that he had missed that morning.  I turned to leave.  “I’ll see you later, okay?”

           “I like that,” he said, hunched over his cane with a big smile.  “I’ll see you later.”

---

           A little more than a month later, I got into my car after a fall baseball practice to find my phone beeping.  I had a missed call from my mom.  A text message awaited me, as well: “Grandpa not doing well. Call ASAP to talk to him.”

           I took a deep breath and dialed.  The phone rang four times before my mom picked it up.  “Hi, sweetheart,” she said, almost whispering.

           “Hey, momma.”

           “I’m gonna put you on speakerphone,” she said quickly.  Then, after a moment she yelled, “Go ahead, Conor!”

           “Hey Grandpa!” I said after a moment, trying to sound normal.

           There was no response; I only heard the shuffling of the cell phone being moved.

           “Dad.  Dad.  It’s Conor.  Conor’s on the phone,” I heard my mom say.

           I heard more shuffling, with something that sounded like a mumble.  I hoped it was Grandpa clearing his throat, preparing to greet me with his usual lighthearted insults.  I had gotten into a lot of trouble as a teenager, which gave him plenty of ammunition.  He liked to tell me, “Ya know, Conor, for the life ‘a me I don’t know how you made it this long, but I’m glad you’re still around.”  I’d reply by saying things like, “I was just thinking the same thing about you, ya old bastard.”

           He loved that.

           “Tell him about school,” my mom said into the phone.

           I cleared my throat.  “School’s going great, Grandpa.  Baseball’s going well and my classes are pretty interesting.”

           “Grrreat,” I thought I could hear him say.  “That’s great, Conor.”

           But the phone was silent.

           “I miss you, though,” I said.

           “How are the girls over there?” I expected him to ask next.

           The other end of the line was still silent.

           “Okay, we’re gonna let you go, Conor,” my mom said.

           A pang hit my chest and my throat felt thick.  My stomach lurched.  “I love you grandpa.  I love you grandpa!” I said loudly.

           The phone went silent, and the call ended.  I slumped over my steering wheel and cried.  It had been years since I’d cried, really cried, and the tears that I had been saving for a worthwhile occasion flowed out of me, hot and sharp and quick.


           The day I flew back to Seattle was the most somber homecoming of my life.  I spent my layover in O’Hare Airport at a small bar by my gate.

           That night, I mindlessly watched TV at my parents’ house until very late, or rather very early in the morning.  Even Griffey, who had been beside himself when I came home, had been asleep for hours with his head on my lap.

           “Ready to go to bed, pup?” I asked him as I turned off the TV.  He lifted his head and sleepily looked at me.  We walked upstairs together.

           Griffey and I squeezed onto my childhood twin-sized bed that night, and I slept late into the morning, long after Griffey had jumped off, until my body couldn’t sleep any longer.



             We buried Grandpa in a grave next to his wife, who I remember almost entirely through old photographs and stories I’ve been told.  It rained all day, and I had never cried harder than when I threw a handful of dirt into his open grave.  This was not dignified, single-tear-rolling-down-the-cheek crying.  This was ugly-faced crying.  This was gasping-for-breath crying.

           Afterwards, those who were at the funeral returned to my parents’ house for the reception.  The rain dried up as we drove over and the sun broke through a bit, which everybody else thought was a sign of something or other.

           Liquor bottles covered our dinner table.  Most of the afternoon, I sat outside on the deck Grandpa and my dad built when I was young.  People came out to commiserate with me, and when I was tired of talking, I would just look down until they left.  At one point, my dad joined me with a couple glasses of bourbon.  We were very somber.  I’m sure we looked dignified in our suits with our drinks.

           “He liked you, you know,” my dad said.  “I mean, really liked you.  Of course, he loved you, but he really liked you, too.  He was genuinely interested in you and cherished his time with you.”

           “I really liked him, too,” I said. “He was one of my best friends.”

           “Mine, too,” my dad said, patting me on the shoulder.  My dad and I had been close for some time now, but it felt awkward to talk about losing the same person, but not nearly the same friend.

           That night, as our relatives were leaving, my uncle Jim hugged me.  He was now the oldest member of Grandpa’s side of our family.  As I let go, he pulled me close again.

           “You’re in charge now,” he said earnestly in my ear.

           “What?” I said. “No.  You are.”

           “I’m old,” he said.  He gestured to the rest of the room.  “We’re old.”

           I glanced around the room.  We shook hands firmly and he left.


           That year, when I graduated from college and returned to Seattle, I moved back in with my parents while I looked for a job and an apartment.  I overhauled my room, buying new posters, cleaning out junk I didn’t need, and re-organizing my furniture.  Through all the change, a big green garbage bag full of old jeans, belts, and sweaters sat in my closet untouched.

           After a couple weeks, it was time.  I carefully tied up the bag and carried it over my shoulder down the stairs.  As I walked toward the front door, I passed our dinner table.  The chair at the head of the table could use a dusting.

           His bag of clothes sat in the passenger seat next to me as we drove to our destination.  They smelled like him, like that old people smell mixed with sawdust.  I drove slowly.  When I got to the donation center, I was given a tax receipt in exchange for the bag.  Estimated value, it said.  As I drove away, I wondered if anybody could fit those clothes.

​

Conor Kelley was born in Seattle, WA, and played college baseball as an undergraduate while earning his BA in English literature from the University of Dubuque.  His work has appeared in various publications in both the United States and Ireland.  He is a staff writer for the fantasy sports site DobberSports.com.  This spring, he will be published in Slow Trains literary journal and The Tenth Muse literary magazine.  Conor is currently seeking representation for his first full-length work, a baseball instructional book.

​

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