To Begin With
By Poetry Issue 87
I am going to lie down in the field, grass a green halo over my head. I’ll let the sun singe the peach, my flesh, luxurious, ruined. Let rain have its way with me so I can feel my mother’s washcloth on my face, hand I turned from. Lord, soften the hard pit of my…
Read MoreNear-Annunciation at Carroll’s Point
By Poetry Issue 87
First try, the bird dropped from the sky, belly-flopping the surface that separates our two worlds, and came up empty. He rose again and wung away in easy, languorous strokes, as if it was all part of the plan. Hunger returned him. But whose? What surprises us now, despite our dragnet…
Read MoreMy Mother’s Visit
By Poetry Issue 86
My mother was the first pianist I ever heard. All through childhood I was spellbound by her gift, her virtuosity. Now I welcome her to my house, show her the grand piano, and lift the lid to its full height and glory. I ask her to join me on the black bench. At ninety my…
Read MoreA Freak of Nature
By Short Story Issue 53
THE FIFTIES. I don’t remember much—I was a small child—but I do know that fear was always buzzing in the background, like static from a transistor radio: a jangly, jazzy fear, not altogether unhappy. The day I discover I’m a freak of nature, the thrill runs from my bellybutton to my throat. We’ve come to…
Read MoreMy Mother in Connecticut
By Poetry Issue 57
After the snow stops and the sky opens cloudless over the mountains, and after three pairs of cardinals flutter back to our feeder, I stand by the kitchen window watching them as I did two years ago this week, talking to you on the phone, tube in your throat capped, strength, you said, coming back…
Read MoreLent
By Short Story Issue 60
LENT SHOULD BE in the summer that she might make use of the hotel pool, bandaged up outside like an open wound. She never had a pool. She had a cat but her cat is dead. Buried in leftover snow behind the garage until the ground softens. It would be nice to swim in a pool.…
Read MoreI Tell My Mother Lies
By Essay Issue 64
I TELL MY mother lies. Sometimes three or four times a day. I lie mostly about money. That I’ve sent it or that I’m just about to send it. Or that surely I will send it tomorrow. My mother waits for money like the bums waited for Godot. One day she called seventeen times. So…
Read MoreWaterfall
By Short Story Issue 64
(1994) FROM THE BREAKFAST BUFFET, Aurora slipped an apple and a banana into the pockets of her apron before opening the doors of the Seneca Hotel café. She looked around for the two skinny, towheaded schoolboys who often sidled up to accept her secret handouts. She never gave them donuts or sugary drinks, but always…
Read MoreThe Earth
By Poetry Issue 65
Matter, mother, Maria Names that come from the beginning With tractor or dragged plow or pick, shovel, spade, hoe, black, reddish, parched, mud-caked, the earth is hard to break. Men labor over it as over a woman virgin even after giving birth, laboring as on a sea whose waves close above him—foam, blossom—as men work…
Read MoreLament
By Essay Issue 67
How I would like to believe in tenderness— —Sylvia Plath, “The Moon and the Yew Tree” HOLY SEPULCHRE Mausoleum and Cemetery sits in a fenced green block on Ridgeland and 111th Street, five minutes south of my apartment. I pass that corner at least once a week, and when I pass it, I pass…
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