Corabel Shofner, author
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The Caretaker’s Cottage
<p><strong>Published by <a title="Sou’wester" href="http://souwester.org">Sou’wester</a></strong></p> <p>What I remember most about adults at our beach colony is this: they’d come in groups to sit and drink. They called this a cocktail party.</p> <p>All their crossed legs were about my eye level where I sat on the linoleum floor, listening, watching tans peeling off shins, watching their red toenails wiggling in plastic sandals.</p> <p>Cocktail parties never seemed fun to me as a nine year old, but the adults would laugh, boy would they laugh—all at once, like cherry bombs going off. You didn’t need to know the joke to laugh with these people. They were an easy and forgiving audience for one another.</p> <a href="https://corabelshofner.com/the-caretakers-cottage/" class="g-btn type_primary size_small"><span>Continue Reading</span></a>
Crab Bait
<p><strong>Published by <a title="Xavier Review" href="http://www.xula.edu/review/">Xavier Review</a></strong></p> <p>Myrtle Ruth Mason died this morning, in her bed with a registered nurse by her side. I hadn’t seen her in years, about thirty five or so, not since we’d stopped going to the beach in Pass Christian.</p> <p>She had been a friend of my parents, in a group of fortunate, good-looking couples raising their families together in central Mississippi. I was you and still believed friends loved each other’s children like their own. Even as a teenager, when we lost our money and had to sell the beach house, I had no idea we were moving on to other friends. Fact is, when Myrtle Ruth Mason died, I hardly knew her. But she saved my life once, I’m sure, although neither of us knew it at the time.</p> <a href="https://corabelshofner.com/crab-bait/" class="g-btn type_primary size_small"><span>Continue Reading</span></a>
Bosoms
<p><strong><a title="Bosoms" href="http://www.wordriot.org/archives/6771">Published</a> by Word Riot Press</strong></p> <p>I anticipated the arrival of my bosoms with the same excitement I felt for the coming of the Mississippi State Fair. I suspect that all little girls wish to grow up to be pretty, even if they have been raised by academics, which I was not. I was raised in the deep south to believe that pretty and popular were coins of gold.</p> <p>By all accounts I was due a Rubenesque figure, with luscious curves and bosoms that could only be contained by a custom made brassiere. I looked forward to the day that my buxom mother would take me to the expensive lingerie store where the old women, with glasses hanging from chains and liver marks on their fingers, had measured my two voluptuous sisters, had run knobby fingers over their bosoms (much to my complete embarrassment), and had fitted them into the perfect bras that lifted and separated all the curves beneath their sweaters. I waited my turn to join this exalted, privileged, and beautiful family.</p> <a href="https://corabelshofner.com/bosoms" class="g-btn type_primary size_small"><span>Continue Reading</span></a>
Between He and I
<p><strong>Published in Willow Review</strong></p> <p>Dear Bro,</p> <p>I forgive that, when we were young, you chased me down and tickled me until I peed my pants. I understand that our oldest sister beat the crap out of you, so you took it out on me, the youngest. It’s only natural.</p> <p>And I’m a good sport. I have often told that funny story on myself, the one about how the older kids took off all my clothes and locked me outside, and you hung my clothes from the gutter on little hangers. It’s human nature. I know you wanted to be part of the pack, laughing at me from the roof like jackals. We were young. I was four and one half, to be exact.</p> <a href="https://corabelshofner.com/between-he-and-i/" class="g-btn type_primary size_small"><span>Continue Reading</span></a>
Lost & Found
<p>Last night’s reading of LOST & FOUND in the sanctuary of Christ Church Cathedral, directed by Catherine Coke, was glorious. The cast of 16, headed by legendary Nashville vocal mentor Nancy Allen, literally breathed life and spirit into this telling of the tale of the prodigal son, which could not have had a more stunning and appropriate back drop than the beautiful stained glass windows that hovered above them. At the end of the show, as the cast reprised “The Pure, the Bright, the Beautiful” I looked above them and saw Jesus reaching out to man. Never before in my personal experience have church and theatre come together more powerfully.</p> <a href=" https://corabelshofner.com/lost-found/" class="g-btn type_primary size_small"><span>Continue Reading</span></a>
