162 16 14
|
Her mother was one of fifteen, so there were children and grandchildren like the mitten crabs scuttling along the lakefront on her parents' farm.
|
10287
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Make a space and inhabit it by placing two lamps at either end of the sofa, eschewing the need to populate the coffee table with Taschen’s Book of Symbols and Ansel Adams’ Yosemite.
|
1561512
|
Shoals of striped fish and strange eels with heads like shattered bottle necks made their way along the ocean as the pulse of the tentacled creature tugged at me, beseeching me to dive further, to give in to the lure of the salt prayers.
|
12054
|
I know the creature has a bite, venomous, and perhaps its sting can paralyze. Paranoia can affect divers and cause a marbling of the arteries, bringing instantaneous death.
|
5821
|
On the way home we stopped at a scraggly acre-and-a-half of stunted apple trees and wild grass. “Here it is,” you said. “My inheritance, and bad luck go with it.”
|
1661312
|
On the water there's the rainbow marbling of gas from an outboard motor making a temporary pattern. The beach seems so far away, the sand so white, the colorful umbrellas giving shade to the tourists.
|
7211
|
7. I made my confession in the Church of the Three Patrons on Friday afternoons and on Friday nights sinned against the light.
|
7676
|
To fall to earth and not implode, to disintegrate into a tangle of crazy limbs: arms, legs, hair, and eyes like the bark of an olive tree, the result a triumph.
|
9943
|
My father gravitated toward dapper:
man or woman, threads, chalk bits, sharp scissors
and pins of all sizes.
|
5800
|
A drunken aunt blabbering away about how hard a life my mother had of it. Yes, but you must have had it hard, too.
|
9676
|
The top of her dresser was covered in rings. Her fingers were unsuited to the piano and anytime she tried to raise a tune on my body the chords rang bum notes.
|
8420
|
Your corpse laid out like a great landmass, the contours and depressions lined your body between shoulder blades and ribcage, enumerating the numerous moments of sadness in your life, pooled in various shallows about the torso.
|
8512
|
The box on the table is filled with connections to other days.
|
1862014
|
I visited you later that month, the tubes and lights and charts chronicling your descent. I held your hand in the brightness of that room, amazed by the translucence of your papery skin and the isobaric schema carrying blood here and there.
|
13665
|
We recite a Hail Mary as I lick the cream off his yellowed fingers, the sound of my classmates at play flooding in the open windows of the classroom.
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