For as long as I can remember, I have felt that I was on the outside of everything. Perhaps it was the bullying at an early age; perhaps it was the absence of love in my family. But whatever the source cause, I always thought I...
Read Morethey were young/ the dark-haired dark-eyed girl/ her tiny skirt climbing her laddered tights revealing a patchwork of pale olive and across from her was a boy or maybe he was a young man / maybe he had already left boyhood...
Read MoreYou feed the dog while I bring seed and suet (a cake of cow’s fat I prefer to not think about) and fresh water to the morning’s birds then, over coffee, turn to the question of a second thistle feeder: there are pros and cons....
Read MoreIt’s always the same even though so often different if you know what I mean, I dream: I dream there’s no time to alphabetize and box the books but I hurry, the movers are coming! and I am frightened ...
Read MoreCan’t we just let the flowers be I wonder aloud knowing the answer No (naively, I’ve asked the question before, more than once) it is their color we need their aliveness although they are dying even before we get them home glass...
Read MoreHe took the last Kool from the day’s fourth pack, wadded up what was left and hurled it at the wastebasket in the corner like it was a hundred yards away, then lit up and inhaled so deeply that when he finally exhaled it was...
Read More“It could be worse.” That’s not always true, but it’s true when the doctor says it’s not a tumor, you won’t go blind, it’s something she can fix. You think of things you’ve seen, glad that...
Read Moreour life a time-shaped miracle —Brenda Hillman I should have paid attention in geometry instead of staring at the yellow patch in Mrs. Reid’s snowy hair, wondering if a rodent had peed on her while she was sleeping. ~ I barely...
Read MoreIn combat most of the time nothing happens; but it’s that mad minute — that mad minute — and you are tested in that minute. It becomes habit. I don’t know how I got the weapon away from that guy. I’m just a fat old...
Read MoreThe [last wave of] thefts happened during the end of the Franco regime. . .nuns who worked in maternity wards took the infants after they were delivered and told the women, who were often unwed or poor, their children were...
Read MoreOrthodoxy means not needing to think. It is unconsciousness. — George Orwell, 1984 The list whispers in vellum, parchment, calfskin quartos whips studded with spikes shrieks muffled by fire. Beneath purple vestments...
Read MoreWhen you had no words ⸺ for your son in law who wept every morning for two weeks after Uvalde when he dropped off your grandchildren at school, or for your daughter, a fifth-grade teacher and mother who wanted to leave...
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