1849 2 2
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I've never really been impressed with authors that write long teary-eyed novels about people dying of terrible diseases or uplifting stories about the armless boy who made the wrestling team.
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184955
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While the other kids blew bubbles, Maddy clung to my neck. She didn't cry or scream, and she held on loosely, not with the death grip some kids have. For five Wednesday afternoons, Maddy wrapped her pudgy arms over my shoulders and rested her bottom on m
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184900
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Beautiful,
a country left abandoned by the parade path.
The soldiers that typically occupy this place,
temporarily removed to neighboring lands;
congregating together,
backs to the native.
I benefit from the accidental diversion.
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184900
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said you loved me
told some jokes
aren’t you dying?
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184952
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184900
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"Did I have a choice? Could I just open my eyes, did I have to ‘see’ as he was telling me now I could? I decided to go for it. What did I have to lose? This was all a dream, too much driving to get here, too much reunion, too much food, too much beer. Or
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184921
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I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.
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184923
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184982
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It was so hot we walked out on our husbands. There were reasons, we supposed. They left the refrigerator doors open all day, grabbing beers when they passed by, tossing the sticky caps upon counters. They drove their Metropolitans to buy food, leaving th
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184934
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Sunday, Nolan and I drop by the ice rink on 10th and Alma to watch the amateur hockey leagues battle it out in an unspoken yet assumed class war: the buff, unemployed rink bums who can grind ice, cross-check, and stick handle like the pros, versus the dou
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184952
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Some books are like old friends and when you read them, you no longer feel alone.
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184951
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“What would you think if I committed adultery?”
She pauses very briefly before replying.
“What, you got time on your hands?”
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184841
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On the way home, “Friendly honk,” he said.
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184864
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Outlined against the thinly layered darkness of the room, there is a silhouette of a small boy with his feet pulled up to the chin, failing to hold its own against the thousand stares from the deep violating the stillness of his room, their long familiarity with the…
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184800
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Under the dirty orange glow of sodium streetlights, the glistening pavement looks slick, but it’s only just wet. The mid-November temperature is cool—quite mild, actually, for this late time of year—still hovering in the upper 30s—so far posing only the
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184832
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Hair today...gone tomorrow
The sun beats down
on my balding crown.
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184875
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my God, I have no time, no time
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1848178
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18481514
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I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.
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184853
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The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue just came out, and all over America librarians are flipping through its pages and rolling their eyes. The swimsuit issue, which isn't actually about swimwear at all, but, is, instead, about young, beautifully shaped female…
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184853
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Our mothers died in childbirth. Taken in by the village, our new mothers taught us to wave at the river boats, to sell our trinkets to tourists. They offered us coins of a foreign currency and little pathetic smiles. By nightfall, our fingers bled. Then came…
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184732
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I don't know if I'm going to get Alzheimer's, but know I don‘t want to. That's why I just read “100 Simple Things You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimer's“ by medical journalist Jean Carper. Doing simple things is something I'm good at. And while I'm…
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184775
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What's the weirdest thing you've ever used as a bookmark? I work in a library. I've seen that, and more.
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184764
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The bird studies me, we lock stares, with no care for who blinks first, birds don’t do macho stand-off.
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184785
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It was the first time I had ever seen a possession.
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184700
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His thought was shattered then by the horrible grind of the telephone in the hall. Surely not for me, he thought. One of the other tenants has a friend who’s landed vipivka, no doubt after 39 straight days of hunt. Booze is so damnably hard to find
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18471513
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We lived on the edge of a tiny Iowa town, and picked corn fields were steps away.
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184721
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God forbid you should break one of the camps precious “rules,” which were more or less like the Ten F'ing Commandments around there.
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18461616
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To See Who's There Able these days to search through centuries, I click, scribble, cut and paste, skim, reject, record, resurrect a wet stone wall, the smell of burning peat. Bob's your uncle, Peggy's …
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184645
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But the world is smaller when I see it /
from the crook of your neck.
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