63 4 3
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She scratched her scalp vigorously and a clump of gray-red hair came away. Who would want her with bald spots on her head?
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1731614
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On a Christmas night, as the bright star shone above a broken manger in a far-off land, doctors and nurses fell to their knees, witnesses to the hand-sized bedsore on his back, flowering all-of-a-sudden into a glorious bright-yellow primrose.
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8166
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In fits of humor he’d send postcards to friends around the country emblazoned with the script, “From the desk of the Bird Mahony,” which, in truth, was a scarred mahogany bar table with unsteady legs.
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11767
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Frail lips created the shapes of vowels, the vestiges of make-up in the cracked grikes, her eyes as a baby’s; comprehending, yet not.
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10899
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Above the trees at the top of the lane, the Dublin Mountains stretch out in their low granite might, Neolithic graves scattered here and there, and the corries and ribbon lakes carved by the last Ice Age glazed by a winter covering of frost and ice.
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8677
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The poem about the butterfly that sang arias reminds me of the desiccated shell of the snapping turtle behind the outhouse. Clapboard houses and rusted drainpipes litter the highway like scattered kindling. Song of the opossum, song of the mournful. Spit and shine the…
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9944
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Smoke from McDonogh's timber yard rises cumulusly over the city.
Off shore a curragh with three men bobs in the heavy swell. Clouds. Green water. The splash of oars echoes.
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125109
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By the fire in the hotel room she rubbed the soles of his feet with quartered lemons, balling her fist and running the knuckles from toes to heel and back again.
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1351313
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Late Summer. Dublin, 1967.Three children. Three adults. Long car journey.Narrow house-pinched streets.Sycamore.Yew.Horse Chestnut.Stippled glass door.Color unknown. Black, red, yellow?Rectangular glass transom.White ceramic number 9.Bronzed letterbox centered below…
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10976
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Panic, the caul of the firstborn burned in the fire, lace napkins bunched into threadbare bags, along with a few faded photographs of the ancestors.
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10786
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Mornings, cod liver oil on a spoon. The St. Brigid’s cross beside the front door, tacked to the Holy Water font. The bit of sponge in the well of the font yellowed and crusted, never changed in the years we've lived in the house.
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13476
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She, for her own comfort, palmed several Xanax and allowed the pillowy distance between them to inoculate her from his barrage of criticism.
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10266
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That bottle of Oban your agent sent on publication of your novel is completely drained, the congratulatory note in silver Sharpie still readable on the glass.
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9044
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Perhaps it was my painted, fleshy body they baulked at, or even my struggles with the bottle; the long nights passed out nasty drunk on the sofa, the children in bed, the fire smoldering, the television on mute.
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1291413
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Quite a figure he cut in his Jockey y-fronts, the Johnson’s Baby talcum powder billowing everywhere, the old-fashioned bottle of Old Spice shaken and slapped on both palms and then both cheeks.
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