Jessica Keener

Shoreline, a short story published in Northeast Corridor
In the morning I threw Jim's pillow out the window.

Night Swim, a novel

Body Chemistry, a novel
This novel began as a story published in The Chariton Review. The story was listed in The Pushcart Prize under "100 Outstanding Writers" and won second prize in Redbook magazine's fiction contest.


I saw the hands on the clock some time ago--two sticks bobbing past my canoe. On this strange lake I forgot minutes and directions and fixed my eyes on the objects surrounding me: aluminum bedpans, thermometer, blankets and a TV bolted high on the wall of the room. Nurses stood by to monitor my pulse. I lay in the Laminar Air Flow Room, the place where Carl had slept.

By the second day of chemotherapy, I grew used to the damp feeling in my limbs. The short plastic tube in my leg administered the toxic drugs, connected to a longer tube that hooked up to a bottle outside my room, and emptied out the waste in my bloodstream. All day I felt the chill in my bones and curled up to stop my knees from shaking. I waited for the bad weather to go away. Beside me, the phone was still. Time circled. My bed spun in its course and moved on.

"You're doing fine," Rose said. She was my nurse now. "You just sleep."

Rose took my arm and wound the pressure gauge around it. Afterward, my heart relaxed. I listed to the sound of air hissing as Rose release the pump. Night accelerated the swirling inside. Often, I had to push myself up, lean over the unsteady edge of my bed and expel what was left in my stomach. LIquid spewed out effortlessly. It was all so very quiet. Just the bed squeaked when I heaved nothing into the metal tin. Repeatedly, I pressed my palms against the mattress and pushed my stomach into my throat before falling back.

"What do you need El?" Rose asked.

"Another tin. Some water."

"Hand me what you got."

My gut in a tin. She and other nurses took everything and didn't seem to mind.

"Keep it up, El. You're doing great. Sleep, now."

In the dark, I waited for morning. It was a long way down my brain. I held onto the bed rails for cold comfort; waited and listened to the rumblings under my skin.

On the fourth day, a grayish light inbued the room. They kept the overhead lights off while Rose held my bare leg and ran a cloth over it. I tried to sit up but I was cold The bath was cold. Please hurry.

The Afterlife of Louis Brown, A Boston Globe Magazine cover story. June 2002
Every dream has a beginning. From the time he was 11 years old, Louis D. Brown envisioned becoming the first black president of the United States. He often talked about it with relatives and friends. He wrote about it in the eighth grade. And by the time he was a 10th grade honor student at West Roxbury High School, he was college-bound, aiming for a PhD in aeroengineering and actively pursuing his dream.

Fate, however, had something else in mind.

The Quiet Revolution, published in CBR Institute for Biomedical Research, annual report '02
Back in the 1970s, when I first learned I had a fatal bone marrow disease called aplastic anemia...READ MORE by clicking on the CBR link (right).