Eva Gordon edited Luke Wallin's Conservation Writing: Essays at the Crossroads of Nature and Culture, A Center for Policy Analysis Book, 2006. She is a graduate of the writing concentration program of Eugene Lang College, at New School University, in New York City, where she worked as an intern for Mendel Media Group (literary agents) and O, The Oprah Winfrey Magazine (Books Department). She is also a graduate of Portsmouth Abbey School, and has studied literature in Chicago, Florence, and Townsville, Australia. She is Luke’s partner in the Manuscript Consultations service.

Backyard Jungle [a prose poem]

I planted tiger lilies and tomatoes, petunias and rosemary—I even bought cacti to adorn the edges of my garden, and placed a table on one side thinking of cocktail parties under umbrellas. They say a cluttered room is a cluttered mind, but before I could decide for myself I left town. Cancer! Marriage! When I came back the back door was held shut by an untended vine. Once I pushed through the ground was covered in green maple tree beginnings and tomato plant ends, extras and I forgot to put stakes in their pots to make the plants grow straight so they curve but I can still see two green tomatoes, and once I push back through this tangled mess, from my perch in the cement corner of the garden, where nothing was growing so nothing is overgrown, I am going to pick those two green tomatoes, and fry them for my lunch.

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Ending of short story "Sliding"

The kitchen chatter has dimmed—Marion hears the front door close for the last time tonight. She comes out of the bathroom and pads as softly as she can into her bedroom, where Shane is curled up on his side, one little hand clutching a foot and the other hanging from his mouth. She lies down abreast of him. Resting her head on the quilt, she stretches her legs out fully, then bends her knees just enough to enclose Shane's whole self within the fold. She notices how huge she is compared to her son, what unbelievably long limbs she has beside his. People are always commenting on the smallness of babies, but never on the bigness of adults. She slides one hand up the length of Shane’s body, rubbing it back and fourth on his smoothest of hair and neck. She closes her eyes and leans in, right up against Shane’s cheek now, and breathes him in. She hears John putting dishes in the machine and wonders if he had any fun today. She feels her son's deep exhale against her cheek and hopes that neither she nor John will take any sleeping pills tonight, and that John will let Shane stay so that her whole family can sleep together in this warm bed.

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Exerpt from short story, "Spring Green"

-Chelsea Morrow and William Teddy Morrow (last names coincidental) are to be married on June 19th, 2004, in the Florentine Ballroom in the Florence hotel in Charleston, South Carolina, at 5pm. How's that?

-Awful, mom, I hope you're joking. Chelsea raises her fingers in mock quotes for this last part, last names coincidental, ugh.

-Well I was joking, sort of, but really, honey bun, we have to address it. Otherwise it just sounds so…profane.

-Holy God, mom, stop.

-Okay, Chels, how about this? We forget the whole wedding invite bit, and just send out invitations to the reception? That way the card can say, "Mr. and Mrs. William Teddy Morrow cordially request your presence..." you know, and so on.

-That might work.

-Great, so it's settled. Forget the wedding altogether!

- Mom, I have to go, I'm late for work. You only get so many sympathetic smiles around this place; it's not like Charleston.

-Fine, no problem, just let it slide. I know what you're thinking, what could possibly matter less, right?

-Bye Mom.

Marybell Morrow works in a dentist's office in Summerville, South Carolina. She has been divorced from Chelsea's father, Luther Morrow, for twelve years, since their daughter was fifteen. When Luther told her he was moving to Los Angeles to open a photography studio, Marybell said good riddance, but you better not sue for the house. Marybell loved that house, a bungalow style with a long front porch and low-hanging eaves that blocked the killing August sun. She liked to sit on it after walking the quarter mile home from work, rocking in her swing chair flipping through magazines and sipping on prosecco or iced lemon water. She read a wide array of magazines-Veranda, Southern living, Gourmet, Good Housekeeping (where her daughter worked as an editorial assistant) and her all time favorite, Elegant Bride. Marybell had been planning her daughter's wedding from the time Chelsea was born. She herself hadn't been married until her pregnancy was six months along, and the whole affair had been rushed, and worse than that, secretive. The families both felt that to remain respectable they would have to only invite close relations and tight-lipped friends, and Marybell was made to wear an empire waist dress with lots of side scrunching to offset her growing belly. The day had come and gone, a blip at best, an embarrassment at worst, and since then one single idea had occurred to Marybell: her child (a girl child with any holy luck) was going to have the most dazzling, most elegant, most celebratory wedding day any Summerville family had ever seen.

Chelsea was raised to see her life as a forward trajectory, from point A to point B, with A as birth, and B as the alter. Her mom reading to her aloud from bridal magazines could not have been enough to instill this thought-somehow her mind has arranged things to appear ordered from one narrow hallway walk to another. Odd, especially since the bungalow has no hallways, and her bedroom had been a perfect box. But the mind does what it wants, and there was the porch, a narrow strip in itself and built of narrow, skinny floorboards, ideal for practicing the one slow foot in front of the other wedding walk dance in the fragrant, dewy mornings and the muggy afternoons that made up little Chelsea's days.

-What are you doing? Luther would ask, coming up the front steps after work.

-Shhh, don't talk, Chelsea would say, you'll make the music stop.

And Luther would shake his head and open the screen door, sometimes looking back once more after he had flicked open a beer and removed his boots. He might have said something to his small daughter, might have encouraged her to ride with him to do errands or go toss a soft ball around in the flower park, but the extreme concentration on his daughter's face always made him turn around. Too much, he thought; too out there.

Six months ago Chelsea called her mother on a Saturday afternoon, during the hour following her weekly hair setting, when she could be relied upon to be sitting in her porch swing.

-Mom, I have something to tell you. Marybell's magazine had slid from her fingers to the chair, and she had tightened her grip on the phone.

-When, Chelsea?

-You aren't going to let me say it?

-Oh say, say it.

-Teddy and I have decided to get married. This summer, we're thinking.

-In Charleston?

-Yes of course.

A small silence had elapsed then, as both women smiled, the spirit of their common dream awakened.

Two months later, on a beautiful March Saturday, Marybell contorted her face.

-I don't know what's gotten into her, Jeanette; it's like she's forgotten who she is.

-When's the wedding, Marybell? I'm sure she's just nervous. Everybody gets nerves before their wedding.

Marybell sat in her usual swivel chair at Twist n' Curl beauty sighing broadly in the mirror. She hadn't spoken to Chelsea in three days, and their last conversation had been strained. She bit a coral pink nail.

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