Liquid Courage Rhonda finds the perfect purple ball on the rack that fits her slim fingers snugly, hefts it skyward with one hand, gel-lacquered nails disappearing into the drilled holes. “Remember this color,” she says. “I want my eyes to be this color.” I nod, pulling out the little wire-bound notebook I keep in my […]
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Guess Who Is your person wearing a hat? Mark asks, leaning his metal folding chair against the cabin wall with a creak, steepling his fingers behind his head. I’m looking at the sunbeams streaming through the open windows, the gauzy curtains flapping lazily in late July breeze, terns on the wing over the lake, my
Cotquean I’m sewing up tears in my boxing gear: a needle, black thread and bachelor stitches. I’m cross-legged on the bathroom floor while Pharaoh splashes in the tub beside me, a pink and laughing treasure two years long. I ran his bath, undressed his happy body. Now I wash his hair, speak quietly through the
I don’t want to die but if i do I hope not to burn in Hell forever but burn in Heaven, be on fire for Jesus as our Sunday School teacher says it, burning the very best way she sings out so Sunday after church I returned to our classroom, empty then but for God
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Bookmarks It might be a receipt, a bus ticket, or if you need that ticket to return on, the foil paper ripped from a half-packet of gum, an old hairclip, something humdrum, a pen, or even, in desperation, a tissue, slightly used (do not judge them) or whatever else can be foraged from the handbag’s
The Standards Line Beneath ice-tipped oaks, half-angry, amused, wandering beside a party of the beautiful — women in evening sheath and wrap coats, Chloe satchels, furs; men at their MacAllan and Maduros. I come upon her, reading Ferrante on a daybed, Manhattan in a chilled tumbler on the floor. Barefoot, lost in lyrics of Bewitched,
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Life After I sit alone, where the jetty soaks its bony ankles in the tide. Bladderwrack drifts, and the waves keep gentle company with the shore. Dusk muffles the lonely curlew’s cry. The reed beds stir: a silent eel wrinkles the water’s surface. A sea breeze ruffles my heart, and I breathe out the remnants
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three Resurrections GOAT On the 6th of January, in the year 2000, a goat, perhaps not the greatest goat of all time but, nevertheless, the last of her species, a bucardo, passed away when a tree fell on her in the Spanish
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I thought of you I thought of you as gentle sun light dancing in my hair, and as the dandelion seeds that float on hazy air I thought of you as springtime rain that falls and runs away, and as the sweet pink honey in the clover,
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Barcelona During the night I play dead for 6 hours or so, my last rites sung out by drunken voices on the Rambla. There is a wine spot in my dreams, which always seem to take place at the end of my second cousin’s quinceañera. You’re always there – of course you are – your
