“Peace, Peace will Come” and “Minor Losses”
It is often
easier to write
the landscape
without the pollution
of people.
This hillside
was once
wild with color
“Bone Dry,” “The Rose Water Incident of 2022,” and “Weary Be the Wanton”
It was lonely having
An anorexic mother
Who was often more concerned
About fitness and image
Then tending to the ache of my feelings
She exercised all the time, and ate light
She strove to be light,
And perhaps thought as her daughter,
I shouldn’t have such heavy feelings
“Megafauna,” “The bird in my voice is a song,” and “Harvest Moon is a Command”
I read somewhere there’s an
orchid whose flower is shaped
like the female of a long dead
species of bee.
Big, bitter fruits that no-one eats,
drop to the ground and rot
“The Buzzer,” “On my bike,” and “Waiting at the Women’s Health Centre”
I almost fold your laundry, the numb air
of garments settling, the last breadth of the dryer,
call to me to care for your hot things
Marie Condo says to ask the clothes
how they should be folded
to listen to the fabric, go with the seams
“When fear rises,” “What counts,” and “A Forecast of Severe Storms Today”
I’m driving through a fog.
Home to public school, I
travel up and down hills,
the 45-mile-stretch
like an obstacle course
to test resolve.
I need this cloudy patch,
not as a puffy mattress,
but as an iron shield
“Memories of You,” “Uprooted Dreams,” and “Tulile, a Strange Fruit”
I thought of you this afternoon,
laughing with your entire body
slightly curling over as you let
yourself lay bare its expression
of unconfined happiness. You were
intoxicated with life despite not having
much.
The English Teacher in the Trailer
Paul McNary sat in a booth at Jamie Burgers talking to the manager Brenda Carter. He stopped by to see her every weekday after he got off work. At that time of day, after the lunch crowd and before the supper crowd, they usually had the dining area to themselves. This particular day she had brought up the subject of them breaking it off because Brenda’s daughter disapproved of him. Brenda did this once or twice a month, and he would have to cajole her out of the idea.
7 Seconds
His first name was Mohammed but everyone who knew the lanky African with the irrepressible smile called him Mo. The nickname fit the man who seemed more a whirlwind of energy or a beam of fierce light than a serious grown-up. Three blocks away from the flat he shared with his girlfriend, Katherine, Mo was tossing pasta in a large silver pan, over a high flame in the open kitchen of Tomato. The second syllable of the brightly lit bistro’s name was pronounced mah. When describing diners’ reaction to the fare in its ads, the Market Street restaurant played on the pronunciation. Ahhhh.
Fallen Woman: A Short Story in Flash
The pedestrian crosswalk was clearly marked, no ambiguities, not for Selah, not for him. Selah waved goodbye to the patient behind her – a ten-year-old girl she’d been treating for three years – and only noticed the truck in the middle of the road as it dawned on her, fast and slow all at once, that the driver wasn’t going to stop. He hadn’t been paying attention.
A Modest Proposal
The sun had yet to reach its zenith in the cobalt-blue Iowa sky when they circled the cloverleaf onto I-80 West. Tess checked their progress on her iPhone Maps function and tried to decipher their final destination. She followed the interstate westward and saw Iowa City appear on the screen along with an icon for the University of Iowa.
“Looks like we’re heading into Hawkeye country,” Tess said.
“Yep.”
A Slow Fever: The Nearly True Story of Typhoid Mary
October 1906
Another family with kids. What I wouldn’t have given to work for an old maid with no children. Just me and her and a bright, clean kitchen. But I was happy. I was cooking.
Portia, who had recently turned six, darted into the kitchen and ran around the oak table. Tristan rushed in behind her.
“Give it back.” His voice was high and whiny.
“It’s the last one.” She held a crumpled scone over her head.
“Stop that,” I said.
They peered up at me. I was a big woman, and I could scare little kids. Portia’s hand fell to her side.
I Am In Your Sway
“It’s a malady particular to artists,” Arachne said to her father one day, as he was watching her work.
That morning, he had made her a gift of sea-blue yarn that was said to have been touched by the gods themselves, or, at least, by a demigod, or, at least, by one of the Oceanids; the seller had been vague about the specifics, but assured Idmon that the material was, in some way, divine. It looked divine, different from the yarn that Arachne usually used, which was single-color and made of cotton. This yarn shimmered the way the sea shimmered when the sun shone on its surface: hues of algae green, river blue, and flashes of gold.
The Red-Headed Dragon
“Stop complaining,” said Julie, looking over her shoulder at her husband as she stacked dishes and coffee cups on a folding utility table against the garage wall. “We’re lucky to get anything at all.”
“I’m not complaining,” said Tom, searching for a place on the concrete garage floor to set the box he was carrying. “It just seems unfair. Your mom and aunt get the house, your uncle gets the money in the bank, your sister gets the new car, and we get—”
“Put the box there,” said Julie, pointing.
Tom dropped the box. It clanged—more goddamn pots and pans.
What Does It Take to Swim Around Manhattan?
August 19, 1989 in the East River
My breathing to the right. My breathing to the left. My breathing to the right. My breathing to the left. My escort boat on my right with the official race observer, the boat captain, Coach Foster, and my dad. My dad concerned about his twenty-seven-year-old daughter in a 28 ½-mile, non-stop race around Manhattan Island. My coach reassuring my dad.
Lucky Number 57
Nowadays, it might be hard to imagine food tasting so terrible that you must cover the taste to eat it. Sad but true. Many people lived with dirty water and tainted food in the 1800s. It was a leading cause of death. Much of society drank alcohol daily because they had no other choice; clean drinking water was not an option, and soda and sparkling water were yet to be invented.
“orchid eye,” “requiem for smoke, for ashes,” and “leaning against the fog”
look into my orchid eye
and I’ll tell you a story about psilocybin sex,
how to melt into another
with full chimera absorption.
honeycombed echo’s of deep earth
as red sandstone soil covered
buried treasure
“Baby,” “Bourbon Street, New Orleans, the night before the Chicago Bears won the 1986 Super Bowl, 46-10,” and “Ghosts”
My sister held the baby as he died.
Not hers.
She held the nose-tube baby
as his mother exercised at the Y,
exorcized, for moments, grief,
setting fragile, ebbing boy in soft arms.
“Déjà vu,” “Among the Remains,” and “In an Instant”
Threat of late Spring rain,
against the chalk scrawled blackboard,
shower of bullets.
Teachers throw bodies
splashing over stunned students
last lectures of love.
“Salt,” “Saturn Waning,” and “Impressions”
The moon is a sliver tonight,
or at least it looks it
through the buildings and the trees.
Planted, four, in a row
like towers on a grid,
I wonder if trees can love.
“On the Way to Conception” and “Different Folks”
My parents loved each other but it’s unlikely no one was harmed
on the long, broad path to my conception, and as for fidelity,
my mitochondrial DNA is British all the way to the damsel
du chambre of Queen Philippa, born in Tonbridge Castle,
mother unknown, fathered by Edward’s ambidextrous favorite.
“New River, Pandemic,” “Lines from New York, On the Massachusetts,” and “De-Winter”
It will take your breath,
the endless wall,
but you will call again.
Lean out, plant the feet:
cinch of gravity at the waist,
below the wash, the rapid.
The Carpenter and the Poet
The carpenter was the one who found the “Lovers Poem.” He was a big man who was fifty-six years old, shaved every morning and wore overalls and a light-blue work shirt. His thoughts were generally of levels, plumb bobs and squares and how he could best restore someone’s old house to its original beauty and purpose.
Be There Now
“Door’s open!” Russell yells.
“When’s it not?” Geoff and Sarah push on into his foyer, absorbing the faint sound of an intricate minor key wailing. They navigate past the huge brass Sri Lankan oil lamp standing front and center topped with a crowing rooster. After hanging her coat on a hook, Sarah turns and stares the rooster in the eye.
Cool, Sarah thinks. Ragnarok. Wrong culture, I know.
The Wrong Kind of Love
The latest Time magazine with a photo of her ex-boyfriend Howard on the cover as person of the year lay crumpled in the trashcan. The article gave him mixed reviews in the superman category. Reporters said he throws super tantrums when people don’t like the way he fixes their problems. As a result, fewer police departments now ask for his help in catching criminals.