November 2020. I’m forty-one and my daughter is thirteen months. When breastfeeding, I feel my breasts to see which has more milk. Grab my boobs like udders. Check my supplies. On the underside of my left breast, about six o’clock as the doctors and technicians would eventually refer to the location, I find a lump. I’d heard about the infamous lump women are supposed to check for in showers and self-exams.
Twenty three from you, my mother
half my body/mind
for sure my blue eyes
but not my right-handedness
which has made my life easier
My family didn’t get cable until about 1990, right about the time home shopping became a term. In this pre-internet era, the idea of buying stuff off your television was goofy and sort of modern at the same time. Not cool (decidedly not) but a solid step up from an infomercial. (Sorry, Cher.) For me, a teen who suffered from chronic sinus infections and was left home alone on sick days, the constant chatter of QVC was a comfort.
I have always hated writing about myself
I’m not photogenic
And I am afraid that my horniness
Would get in the way
But this is where we’re at
Wilkinson: A lot of it was intuitive at first. A lot of it was writing and trauma, writing about difficult subjects. It feels possible to do that by writing in fragments, to take bits and pieces and then try to assemble them into some sort of holistic body after the fact, as opposed to just telling a nice, unified narrative.
Christmas 2021, and I was alone, doing time in quarantine after a Covid exposure at work. Feeling lonely and a little sorry for myself, I decided to cheer up by popping a frozen pizza in the oven, grabbing a beer, and watching the new limited series Hawkeye on Disney Plus. I knew almost nothing about this character—unlike the rest of America, I’d never seen an Avengers movie –
They were in the car, Lee concentrating on pulling out of the driveway when Zack announced he was moving to California.
“All the best skaters are there.”
“Your family’s here.”
“I’ll visit. Once a year.”
“Ah, you’ve got it all figured out.”
My doctor wore the expression of someone with a problem to solve. And he was looking at me.
I froze, a cup of water midway to my mouth. Prior to seeing his furrowed brow and pinched lips, I had no more than mild curiosity about the outcome of the questionnaires I had completed, designed to determine whether or not I had attention deficit hyperactivity disorder …
Mami has been decluttering. It’s time to toss some of it, she said. I still say hello to whatever is left when I visit. On the nineteen-minute drive to my parents’ house, I think of what potted succulent Papi will arrange for me this time. The collection on my balcony is growing. I am rummaging through dusty photos…
It’s easier now than ever to play and get into video games, but as we become more comfortable with digitization, I wonder about the preservation of old and lost video games, in the same way I wonder about old films and stories.
It’s around 11:00 pm and five of us are sitting outside in our shared courtyard, taking stock of what weapons we have between us. Helicopters buzz overhead and the local news shows downtown Long Beach literally in flames as protestors run through the streets in rage over the murder of George Floyd. It’s the summer of 2020, and the world-as-we-know-it is actively collapsing around us.
“No one wears sarees in America,” my husband who was on an H1 visa in the United States said when I asked him what clothes I should bring. It was 1999, I was newly married when I said goodbye to everything that was familiar in India, and packed twenty-three years of memories into two compact suitcases, not knowing when I would return.
Vic acts like the world is ending when he discovers my computer has been infected by malware that has deployed a Bitcoin miner to consume over 50% of my CPU and a size-able chunk of my electricity bill, but I shrug because I hardly notice my computer grinding to a halt, and even though I believe cryptocurrency and blockchain will only ever amount to vehicles of Ponzi profits and social harm
I gazed up to the sky in tears. The breath caught in my throat. The moon was utterly absent, and in the resounding darkness there were so, so many stars. Their shapes are the same as ours. The sand beneath me felt cool as pool water as I pondered my infinitesimality. I took pleasure in rolling the ancient grains between the grooves of my fingers.
My daughter, Rebecca—from mannerisms and facial expressions, to likes and dislikes—is a mini me, except for the fact that she is much taller than I am. Every year at our Drama Club banquet, we had the tradition of giving out funny awards to everyone. From the time she was nine until she was my student, Rebecca’s award was “Most Likely to Become Her Mother.”
Our daughter has put herself
in hospital again.
I spend the day beside her,
talking, laughing, abiding silence
At the beginning of my professional career, after graduating Yale University’s School of Arts MFA program, my artists soul was torn between Flemish painting of the 15th-16th century and the ideas imbedded in the 20th century DADA art movement. Specifically I was drawn to the Apocalyptic visions of artists like Van Eyck, Bruegel and Bosch and simultaneously to the anti-art of Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia.
For the first time in six years, I invited my mom to sleep under the same roof with me. I was graduating from college the next day, and I wanted her to be there when I walked across the stage in my green cap and gown, triumphant against the odds.
Hi Dad, When you died, I figured there wasn’t any point in writing to you. But since the world broke down last year, everything has shifted, including how I want to communicate with you. I know it’s been a while since I last wrote to you. Yes, I know—15 years. You value precision. You were devout about following the news, but has it all been too much, or what?
We crave contact. Politics and a pandemic have driven us apart, so we’ve found each other in a new place, a world within a world—The Metaverse. The digital universe is a limitless space, promising contact, a way for us to find each other across multiple digital realms. Some worlds replicate our own. Others are “cartoonish, [and] gummy-colored fantasy.”
my neighbor drapes the strings the first weekday in december,
neon gold cords for inflatable mickey, santa, & snowman
melted simulacra until sunset when the front lawn descends
into a madness of bright blue icicles, rainbow garland
across the garage, pink orbs of love encircle a glittering present,
One of the joys of writing historical fiction is having an excuse to slide down internet wormholes in the name of “period research.” A go-to source of mine is old catalogs. Me: How much for a Betsy Wetsy in 1937? Does my novel involve a Betsy Wetsy? No. Is it even set in 1937? Not as such.
Ten minutes of digging for the copy line “She’s Rubber and Loves a Bath”?
Not having child care sucks. I had child care. I had a miraculous saint of a woman who knew baby sign language and spoke Spanish and could be trusted with my daughter. But, she revealed herself actually to be an evil, disappointing deserter that quit with no notice. Well, eleven hour’s notice. Text came through Sunday at 9 p.m. before work on Monday at 8 a.m.
Team tryouts this week. If you want to perform at Camp Hollywood, show up at the studio on Monday.
This announcement popped up in my social media feed about two days after I turned sixty-three. Camp Hollywood is a huge deal for Lindy Hoppers and other swing dancers.
My love for horror began at six or seven. I’d watch horror movies with my brothers and then crawl into bed with my parents that night and swear it wasn’t because of the movie. And then there were the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. The illustrations unsettled me, stayed with me for years. The blurry but striking images of bones, ghosts, haunted houses…
Gaby left her hometown of Guadalupe y Calvo in Mexico’s northern Chihuahua to become a midwife. I don’t know whether she was more interested in delivering babies or simply staying alive. Perhaps she doesn’t either. She told me her story over lunch in Parral after a birth preparation class she gave at one of Mexico’s few midwife-run clinics.
I am awakened abruptly by the sound of someone opening cabinets in the kitchen. I text my brother to check if it’s him, assuming the resident night-owl might be roaming for food. Instead of a text back, I hear my brother and father frantically search the house for someone they wouldn’t find. Every night after that, I fell asleep with my ears perked, waiting for anything unusual.
My art is mostly inspired by Haitian artists or memories of my country as well as the Impressionist era. You’ll find that most of my artwork is faceless because I associate them with my fading memories. I’ve always found it hard to remember faces and features. My other creations come to me in flashes or my dreams.
You’re alone in your lair, on Netflix, despite the midday hour. You feel guilty but who could blame you during the early summer days of COVID? The sky is painted a brooding dusk, whether that be by rain or annual California fires you can’t tell. See, you’ve been hiding inside, in the dark, lit only by the neon light of your oversized TV
I cocoon myself
from memory’s chill
grip—wrap
layer upon layer around
heart and bones; flesh upon flesh. . .
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