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Carol Pearce-Worthington

The Scholarship

In return for a university writing scholarship, she pledges her first novel. Through winter, spring, fall, and a second winter, she writes and she reads excerpts from the novel in class until the book at last is ready for submission. The publisher responds: If she wants this book published, the rabbi cannot abandon his wife for a younger woman at the end. Winter again. Six months after changing the ending of her book, she is still unable to walk.

paper cut–
ripping up
the poem