The nurse places the silicone face mask over my nose and mouth before aiming the light at my belly. The doctor is behind me, out of sight, washing his hands. Water hits the sink with deep hollow thuds and spatters. I imagine the sounds are my bare feet slapping on the floor as I jump off the table and flee down the hall.
My first brush with the Happy Place could have happened one of two ways. It was either the email itself, sent en masse by them to a list that comprised what they presumed to be a target audience, or it was an advert that had popped up somewhere on a social feed and on which my scrolling thumb had rested long enough to count as a click. The laws of Internet probability dictate that some version of the latter led to the former…
Eva leans against the doorframe and watches Daniel as he works. As he passes her, carrying bags and boxes to the car, she also watches the street. With one hand she shields her eyes from the brightness and with the other she meditatively strokes her belly. It is a fine spring day but infused with a strange stillness, a peculiar quiet. The sky is clear and she notes again how odd it is to look up and not see a mesh of vapour trails above the city.
It was a tougher slog than on most days. The spring had come early, and the rain hadn’t let up for three weeks. With every step, his boots sank an inch deep into the muck and released with a slurping sound. He was approaching a transition point in the woods, where the heavy canopy gave way to the wetlands that extended several miles to the abandoned northern train tracks.
Kevin called Nolan to warn him that the clock was ticking, that if he wanted to see Dad before he died, Nolan had better go through Mimzy to schedule an appointment soon. The slots, Kevin said, were filling up. Mimzy and Oscar were allowing one family member visit per week, only over the weekend, then Oscar had to have the rest of the week to recuperate.
When Adam was very young, he went skating on a pond in the woods with his older brother David. The pond was down a country lane surrounded by barren deciduous trees, naked winter forms, twisting and shaking in the wind under steely, hovering clouds. With a frigid snap in the air, the boys were swaddled in knits and coats.
Martha would read the newspaper more than once;
box scores, her favorite, and cartoons that made her laugh.
Small stories with big fame: mothers lifting cars
and the obituaries of the not so named
I dig for shelter
in a homespun
endometrial layer
each new moon
like the first rain
each crimson drop
seething…
The phone calls come three nights in a row, 2:30’sh, from different people, waking, scaring us to death. The black, landline rotary dial hammers its bells like a fire alarm.
The peace and quietness of a summer morning, by a lake near “Stinkin” Lincoln Maine, was shattered by the startling discharge of a Remington Model 1875 Single Action Army revolver. My father’s loud cry and a string of bad words followed.
Everyone but Helmut was anxious. He sat by himself, as usual, at a small table in a corner of Café Stammtisch, calmly reading a newspaper. Germany Invades Rhineland! The headline took up half a page. He yawned.
He rode in on horseback, his silky mustache
And I was worried for his life. Not that he couldn’t
Care for himself. He had strong legs, especially
The thighs. He was so impressionable among
The men. Christian took an instant liking
An angry goat fronts
the entrance of the trail –
an unfamiliar gatekeeper.
Payment is an exchange
of glances, a thousand
yards to nowhere.
I walk paths near my home
And think about breaking language
In pieces. I think about the shards
Scattered by will and hunger
Because so much has been lost.
In the summer heat, the friction of feet melts the city’s asphalt to sludge. A mammoth wave curls over Broad. Cocoons pigeons and taxis. Engulfs cardboard boxes, condos, and their inhabitants. Folds into itself.
The days of lone children
riding atop handlebars
through cookie-cutter neighborhoods
are memories of yesteryear.
They’re sepia photographs
in an attic-ridden album
blanketed in a thick film of dust.
Our town is laid out like a chessboard. Two powerful families who dominated the place for almost two centuries, the Cassavoys and the Farradays, have fought for control. First they fought over lumber rights. Then it was land. Then the battleground shifted to public opinion. Each had a newspaper of different political stripes. Each had a radio station playing different kinds of music.
Framed diploma and teacher’s license,
taped on the institutional wall,
these credentials face the stars.
The star-struck welcome board posts a message:
Practice safety.
But will these stars fade, fall into the waste basket?
When she approached me in the hotel lobby, I was reviewing my notes for the presentation I would be giving the next day. My laptop was open on the glass-topped coffee table and twenty-three PowerPoint slides alternated on the screen as I clicked through them repeatedly. I had given this presentation before, many times, but now I was nervous for some inexplicable reason. I was prepared, but on the other hand, I was skeptical of how my talk would be received.
Late summer days, relentless sun
heating the morning city, turning
afternoon to a concrete sauna
during the searing days of August,
when, even at night, the asphalt steams.
The Tennessee hills are tattered green curtains longing for the first frost to replace the well-worn testament of summer with a golden raiment. Even the aggressive Kudzu crowding the edge of the highway seems tired of reaching, always reaching for tomorrow. We’ve been on the road for a long time now and the tiredness we carry has settled inside.
One corner brick
100 year old black blossom stained across
Northeast soot fading
to raw pink orange southwest
Checks the force of two walls
20 bricks under
100 press down from above
The streets around here empty out in December, until there are just the lazy summertime sounds of a few people walking their dogs or hosing their plants. Neighbourhoods are blanketed under a mostly placid silence, but sometimes there’s also a pall that covers those of us that haven’t escaped to the seaside.
There is a man falling from the sky.
I am serious. He is carrying a photon clock
and the light inside is stretching
the duration of a second. The speed of light.