Faith Brody Patane was born and raised in South Jersey, right outside Philadelphia. She graduated from the University of the Arts in 2006 with a BFA in writing for film and television. She wrote the script for Miss December, a feature film that was locally shot in Philadelphia and received awards from several notable film festivals, including First Glance and Woods Hole, and was later purchased by Kevin Smith’s distribution company, SModcast Productions. Faith produced I Am Santa Claus and has won awards for her unproduced screenplay, Scarlett Sunshine (1st place in the Downbeach Film Festival). Her work has appeared at Sequart, Houseboat, and The Northern Liberties Review. When she’s not writing Faith works as an 8th grade teacher in South Jersey.

There Is No 14th Street
By Faith Brody Patane

There is no 14th street.
13th, 15th, with Broad
Carefully placed in between.
It is loud with
Color, shops, theaters, lights,
People and their dining decisions,
Women looking for old friends,
Children and their grasping hands.
I once walked down and a man shouted
From a high window
That he thought I had nice legs.
I was killing it that night,
Feeling reckless in square-heeled boots.
I’ve crossed the street,
When the yellow was turning red
And the cars would barely stop,
And I’ve wondered if I’d mattered,
And I remember feeling
Inexplicable pain
When the Borders Books on the corner
Was forced to shut down,
Due to financial ruin,
Due to the difference in our values
And our patience.
Then there was a night
That it rained so hard
That the hair I tried to curl
To imitate a starlet’s style
Instead sat flat and weighted against my head
And my arms were freezing,
But we laughed,
Because it was us in this situation,
Trying to hide from the rain
On a street without a number,
In the center of our love story.