A cardinal opens its ragged wings against the sky like an old wound; something red and feather-fringed caught up by the sweeping cold, berry in beak, as it dips in and out of the wind. Shaky in its first flight, the cardinal adjusts its tail, throws its body onto the strongest current, quivering in the … Read more
“Everything from here on out is a rat race—” I write on my grad school application, in the words of my late brother. He isn’t really dead, but his career may be. It’s so far gone that he talks of settling down and having children. Just a year ago, he told me that he could … Read more
She thought the role rubbish but she had agreed to it because he swore there’d be a good part in his next play: It Is What It Is something more than the usual witch, wench, lady in waiting, something, he had hinted, with weapons and the chance to use them. She wasn’t naïve. She knew … Read more
We see through the disguise, as we’re meant to. Just as we know who is Rosalind and Viola and Portia no matter their clothes. We smile when Henry the Fifth, camouflaged by a cloak, says to his soldiers, “The king is but a man as I am.” We recognize the deceptions of Iago and Aaron … Read more
Shipwrecked and washed ashore, disoriented in a strange new world, it’s a story familiar from The Odyssey, Robinson Crusoe, Lost, video games, our immigrant grandparents, our divorced parents. And it will happen to us as well. The key is to recognize when you’re free from family, you’re free to make yourself into what you can … Read more
I watch for a house in a moon crater. Smoke nudges the rim. A light hangs across three chimneys, and an astronaut sits down on the roof, and she waves. It might be the ghost of one of my aunts. She might be looking for a hinge that bounced from a rocket. She might … Read more
A Blackfoot legend tells us that the buffalo taught a maiden how to sing and dance — to restore life, year after year, to the buffalo who were killed. And so the people believed that the animals were willing to be killed, that there was a mystical covenant between the animal world and the humans, … Read more
Mom brought the hamburger, Gerald the buns. Aunt Shirley brought coleslaw and a Neil Diamond CD. Gary from across the street brought plum pudding in an antique bowl. Lawrence brought pickles, Steven brought cider, and Marsha carried in the yellow folding chairs. You brought a cake and I brought potato salad and an extra-big plastic … Read more
to look, again, at her lips — pinked and mysterious and to look at her gray eyes through her glasses. (She waved at me and I waved back.) Even though she is majoring in Finance, she never heard the expression bean counter which I, laughing, explained to her— well, you see, the beans represent other … Read more
The day you crashed the boat there were hardly any people on Okanagan Lake, just you and me and a lone fisherwoman trolling for rainbow trout. We were mostly alone on the lake but we weren’t alone in Okanagan. That September, I remember, we were there with your dad and your maman and your aunt … Read more
Did you ever stop to think some crosswalk buttons you push each day are connected to nothing? You push and wait longer than seems right, musing maybe the universe is teaching you patience. Then one day you experiment by not using the button and discover time between signals is almost the same. This makes you … Read more
My lungs are already clearing alveoli pinking and perking my breath the breathing of great whales rush of sound massive ingulping. Now I want my last cigarette. Do you have matches? Just one cigarette please. This is the last one. I’m stopping tomorrow. I prefer aprons egg beaters rolls of clear tape walls adorned with … Read more
A neighbor’s dogs killed Dan’s chickens. His leghorns, his New Hampshire reds. Even his rooster didn’t survive. After death will all the chickens I’ve ever eaten surround me? If slaughter-sized Cobb broilers take up their cloned bodies, white feathers, red combs, I’ll regret the stir fries, chicken strips, Red River salads, pot pies, soup with … Read more
Everyone’s dead or dying in Gericault’s painting. He locked himself up with corpses. Emptied a room, backed benches to walls. An eye stared into nacreous light. How do peasants die, Tolstoy asked as he, a nobleman, embarked on his dying. Deserted crossroads, invisible coach in the distance, man turned to still life, action arrested. Night … Read more
I’m supposed to be at my girlfriend’s. I had a pass for the weekend to go to her house for an early Christmas visit. But we had a fight and she got on the bus without me. She didn’t even look out the window as I waved, hoping she’d change her mind. There’s no way … Read more
I often wonder if your child leading other toddlers single file will march in circles round and round chubby legs and stoic frown signs written in crayon raised up high a whole two and a half feet pointing to the sky tiny fists beating tiny chests with not so tiny voices to protest the horrors … Read more
Rain in Los Angeles makes you think about all the lives you don’t lead, the times you didn’t move somewhere with four seasons, of girls who wanted you to follow them back to northern ancestral homes or jobs in fashion, of your parents wishing you lived around the corner for Sunday games and the inevitable … Read more
Now that I think back on it, I’ll bet every girl at Edgecomb knew about my affair with Denny Mackle, the college handyman. It’s hard to be private on a tiny campus jam-packed with three hundred post-pubescent Presbyterians. Having Winnie Foy for a roommate didn’t help, either. Winnie could spread gossip with the speed of … Read more
Unearthed after a long rain, worms stretch like wet band-aids across our yard. The dog takes her last swim before the pool is drained. Even as the water recedes, our father skims the surface with a tattered net, catches leaves from the neighbor’s trees. Here, where we practiced back strokes, flipped off the board, blessed … Read more
After my father died, I dreamt doctors could stitch someone back to life, bone by bone, breathe air into lungs, rub warmth into stiff limbs. He returned to me another man— an uneven gait, sunken steel eyes, and rubbery, damp hands. Clumsy with love, his speech was slurred. He was my pet; I fed him, … Read more
Calls on a highway home from her evening shift, where she sells clothes rich in silk and cashmere. Last year, I had a miscarriage. Her voice is thick with Kentucky, faith in her husband, her firstborn, and miracles. It turned to cancer. Her body loved the tumor, she says. Loved it so much her belly … Read more
The calm lunatics don their winding sheets and take to the streets to proclaim the inevitable, to sing requiems with tender fervor, to sweep their brooms at life’s debris, tick, tick, the dried leaves of loss and the wayward, crippled love and fear, both faint and staggering. The calm lunatics with stanzas in their eyes, … Read more
Bad little bird in the sky, seeking bones with a sneaky hunger. More insect than winged, more hornet than hawk. What do you know up there, tracing a path, should a child wander out from a gate? What hum will she hear before you deliver the mess of death? Mercedes Lawry has published poetry in … Read more
I feel for the edge with my toes. You are behind me, though I cannot hear your breath. I know something about your silence. The afternoon clouds are gloves of old cotton, the kind we wore to church. I am unsure of belief but I miss the dead, a host of them, a damn choir … Read more
Shown to be a slice of particular measure framed as construct, named as hour or minute. In the hands of the man at roof’s edge, maybe paper with mundane word, or gospel or small white field. Do birds take notice or mimic curiosity? The man might have forgotten the weight of bread crusts. Never fed … Read more
