Articles

Every year, I surprise myself 
with how bad I am at most of the things 
I want to be good at: gardening
and happiness, mainly. 

Sham is subtractive, but I, a being, am aggregate. Creation is aggregate. Human creativity is, in its deepest dynamics, aggregate and productive. Let us ornament ourselves, yes, but not toward the end of erasure. Let our adornments extend our penumbrae, our enveloping souls, into the ether that melts into heaven, stacking glory upon glory as cell and organ, skin and fur, aura and crown, radiate the Life that animates all.

I don’t pretend that I am capturing the truth about my subjects. I’m interested in creating something that feels timeless, that could have been made at any moment.

In Sicily, they bake Mini di Virginia, little pink cakes with cherries for nipples, to honor her saint’s day.

As many times
as the doctors look,

my good breast mirrors back 
nothing but good.

I believe memoir is the most intimate of genres and, for that reason, an excellent literary response to loneliness.

Finally, you add a layer of cookies, and—voila!—a chessboard. Then you let the whole thing sit in the refrigerator until the cookies get soft, and, oh, sweet Jesus, it is so gloriously rich, so simple but so good, like the very best things about Appalachia, sweet iced tea and ghost fireflies and steep, winding roads leading nowhere in particular and everywhere all at once

The mountains encircled him
like elders less stern
than his father the pastor
who warned him that whatever
gave him pleasure was a sin,

even sledding…and, later, painting.

A hen, however, is not a word. Let us be clear. She is a living creature, a being to be experienced. She is her own center of consciousness. She cannot be explained, will never be solved.