Infantile Paralysis
By Poetry Issue 85
Dismayed by the murder of Pakistani healthcare workers for vaccinating children against polio, I recall the dread that darkened my childhood before Salk proved the power of killed virus to halt infantile paralysis, the summer scourge. I also recall a girl, held upright by braces the rest of her life, one of six to fall…
Read MoreElegy for a Microbe Hunter
By Poetry Issue 85
There is no way we can thank him, other than not to forget him. But we do not trust our resolve, having to look up his name. Even the name of the virus fades from our minds as strange microbes evolve and spread in Guangdong, driving out old fears with new. SARS, a benign sounding…
Read MorePoverty
By Poetry Issue 82
So much sitting still these past months, hoarding my sorrows, looking out at another day’s news- paper being buried by the accumulating snow. I could be waking from a half-remembered dream that, no matter how I try, I’m unable to put together, my daily sighs a kind of catch-all for the poverty of everything I…
Read MoreIdeal Marriage
By Short Story Issue 81
THROUGH A WARMING NIGHT the ice dams on the Big Slough thawed, and in the morning the first robins, antic in their hunt for worms, hopped in the south yard. Freddie Cahill’s spirit, dormant through what had seemed the longest winter of the eighty-some she’d spent on earth, stirred once again to meet the season’s…
Read MoreThe Spif
By Short Story Issue 84
SINCE ACCIDENTALLY BEING LOCKED inside Carmody’s Used Books, I’ve slept badly. In the mornings I manage a bright if groggy farewell as my husband gives his suit pockets a preflight pat and the kids shrug into school backpacks. Alone, I pour myself more coffee and read—the newspaper, catalogues, reviews in the alternative weekly, passages of…
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