Bone Swans: Stories

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Picture me sitting in a small used-book shop with a banana cream pie on my lap. The young man reading at the lectern has given us a short-short story that is certainly publishable and has now launched upon one that that is not. We have had the poetry that suggests a poor article in Reader’s Digest cut up into uneven lengths, and the heart-wrenching personal memoir of the sister of a soldier killed overseas. And others. You know.

The readers are kept in order by Claire Cooney, a startling young blonde with a smile capable of lighting up a good sized theater. At last she reads herself, a poem that rhymes and scans and grabs you from the opening line. The hero is a disfigured corpse floating down a city sewer, and it is funny when it is not horrible. (And sometimes when it is.) She chants it, and her voice is clear and musical. I couldn’t be prouder of her if I were her father.

I met Claire when my friend Rory Cooney brought her around to see me. His daughter wrote, he explained, and he felt she had talent. Would I be willing to coach her a bit? I read some short pieces she had written and promised to do it. She was eighteen at the time.

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