by Eileen Hennessy

The ice will be wiped clean with a stroke of the pen. The past will be broken in a striking way. But even on this extraordinary day, encourage your children to understand and respect the importance of tradition and precedent. Let them stand on the letter of the law so that they will be tall enough to look out through the window at the promised land. Open the window so that they can throw out one of their dolls and watch her fly through the air and land sprawled on the stoop, her legs spread wide, her torso twisted, her head turned up to look at the house and at the window and at your children looking down at her and arguing the fine points of the ancient and honorable art of defenestration.

A native of Long Island, Eileen Hennessy has spent her life there and in New York City, apart from residence for several years in France and Austria. She holds an M.A. in English/creative writing from New York University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. In terms of creative writing, Eileen is a poet first and foremost. Her work has appeared in numerous literary magazines, including The Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, Whiskey Island Magazine, Columbia, Confrontation, The Alembic, The Seventh Quarry, The Dirty Goat, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Folio, Inkwell Magazine, The Licking River Review, Rhino, Forge, Crack the Spine, Stickman Review, Smartish Pace, Southern Poetry Review, The New York Quarterly, and Sonora Review, and in several anthologies. Her poetry collection titled, This Country of Gale-force Winds, was published by New York Quarterly Books in November 2011.