Madness by John Coats

I was fourteen that summer and told it was a sin to touch it, that I would go mad, and I did try not to, then I was on the porch when her lovely thirty-something self in that V-necked print dress, walking by, smiled just as a sudden, blessed burst of wind lifted her below-the-knee hem line to mid-thigh, and as she bent forward to pull it down I glimpsed her bra, the swell of her breasts, the lace of her slip, and I ran to find a private place where I could go mad.

Artist’s Statement

 I want my writing to be participative, self-revealing, sacrificial — an offering, a calling out to the reader to do the same.

John Coats has a Bachelor's degree, an M.Div from Virginia Theological Seminary (Episcopal), and an MFA in creative writing from Bennington College. Having served eight years as a parish priest in Texas and California, he joined a startup training organization, The Life Training, now called More To Life. After fifteen years as a principal speaker and trainer in the United States, Britain, and South Africa, John left the program and worked the next eight years as a management consultant. Then the writing bug bit and wouldn't let go. He is the author of Original Sinners, Why Genesis Still Matters (Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 2009), a non-religious exploration of the characters in the Book of Genesis. From 2014-2021, he was a fiction editor and book reviewer for Consequence Magazine.