No amount of pleading or pain meds could stop Mr. Villanueva from yowling like a depressed cat at night. After his roommate threatened to sue the hospital for emotional distress, the nurses decided that Mr. Villanueva deserved a private room. From that came my first candy striper assignment to convert Room 128, which stored pumps, […]
Six Minutes One night, walking along the sidewalk that coasts a little park that is not enclosed, a park with wooden benches covered in sentences written in permanent marker, a swing on the edge of a very protective silence, in an almost residential area, enveloped (I) in the damp of an autumn that had just […]
I. You may find it emotionally difficult to dissect signifiers of personhood, says the anatomy professor, meaning these knuckles, these nails still with dirt underneath them, this stiff hand I hold as I trim away skin to the tendons beneath, thin ropes that, puppet-like, pull up each finger. Their names flexor digitorum profundus abductor pollicis […]
The rabbi hands me the shovel, instructing me to invert its bowl before scooping the first mound of earth onto my father’s grave. This is the custom, he explains. To honor our loved one’s memory, we must demonstrate our reluctance to perform this obligatory task. With an upside-down shovel, the rabbi says, his free hand […]
[flash fiction] Come Spring A teaching job plucked us from the city, planted us gingerly in a town literally surrounded by corn. We bought a small house, two bedrooms, one bath because it was compact, updated and affordable. It would not require my attention. My wife was consumed in great gulps by the baby, and […]
The trees were clustered so thickly now that Mischa could no longer pretend she wasn’t lost. She’d had to slow to a walk, too, not that it mattered much. When you’re not sure where you’re headed, a walk will get you there just as well as a run will. She looked down at her Garmin. […]
July 14, 2013 (Not Guilty) The rally is not the mourning I need. A Protestor wears a new gray, leopard-print hoodie, carries tropical flavor Skittles, 99-cent honey-iced tea. Black boy—still dead. White Man richer, free, alive. Tall White Guy with the Socialist T-shirt is the master of ceremonies […]
The dictionary tells us that a Blue Moon is the second full moon to occur in one month, a rather rare thing. But in the land of stories, a Blue Moon can mean something much more rare. Something very exciting indeed. * * * Four hundred twenty nine years ago, in a snug little village […]
Pittsburgh Center for Complementary Health and Healing, one Sunday morning in late spring. My feet, immersed in a mineral bath of mint and lavender. Candlelight reflects off the vanilla walls; Native American flute music floats to my ears. Rebekah, the therapist, sits across from me, her chestnut hair pulled back in a loose ponytail. This […]
It was almost 6 AM and Heidi lay awake in bed, trying not to think about the war. Lately, when she looked at her girlfriend, Dara, she was reminded of a Sultanese woman—a civilian—that her unit fired on. The woman had been carrying a basket full of fruit, which from a distance posed a threat, […]
This is a photograph of your hands scooping water out of the river named lonely running through the center of your grandmother’s chest. This is a photograph of your knees bent at the altar painted with the years between you & the last time you saw your father cry. This is a photograph of the […]
Running Water When I would go over to my friends’ houses, I thought it was weird that their parents didn’t scream or hit them. I thought that maybe these parents behaved when company was over but that, surely, they had the same home life I did after I left, that my friends were tormented by […]
I knew it would be my last few days in the city, But I wasn’t going to tell you that I was leaving. We made our way toward the candled windows Of Little Italy like a movie from the early 30s, Grainy and aimless and your arm through mine. Our throats were phonographs, notes of […]
Step The physical therapist, who comes to evaluate my son, is thrilled with our upstate New York property. A short, steep hill moves from our front porch into a brief, undulating yard and from there to a former cornfield now thick with swamp grass and milkweed. The yard itself is overrun with crabgrass, dandelions, broad-leaf […]
Living alone in the city had done something to me. Until occupying a one-bedroom apartment on 18th Street with no one to keep me company except Sydney, a cuddly cat with the loudest meow, I never would have walked down the city’s busy streets without a companion. Now that I think about it, it seems […]
Running from Virginia to the other shore you’re halfway there in Topeka or thereabouts which is where you stay and serve coffee in an Edward Hopper truck stop where it’s always dusk and the interstate rolls flat out parallel to the sky straight as a chalked line snapped against a wall no curves or hills […]
When I was little, Dad would get into the car and say, “Let’s get lost.” “OK,” I’d shout. “Let’s get lost.” At each intersection he’d ask, “Which way?” until we didn’t know where we were anymore. “Look,” I’d tell Mom when we banged into the breakfast room later. “Dad bought me a diary with a […]
Dad got drunk in the afternoons. He slouched in his short shorts and torn Ocean Pacific tee-shirt for hours after work watering the magnolia sapling by the driveway. His sneakers pressed yellow dimples into the St. Augustine sod as he watched the teenage girl across the street bronze in her strapless two piece. His […]
A few days before Halloween, we drove home from a friend’s church where parishioners had decked out the trunks of their cars with lights, plastic skulls, and spiders, even fog machines, then backed them up into rows in the parking lot so the kids could Trunk or Treat. “Mom!” Blaine hollered, pointing out the window. […]
What are they that move Through these rooms without even The encumbrance of shadows? —Tracy K. Smith In a land so sharply lit Of such vast emptiness dry scrubbed Of rock ocotillo and arroyos Framed by mountains canyoned Toothed and mesa flat a sky That won’t release one’s gaze The blues of it with […]
Baby, let’s not go to the place where you and your other lover go. That place is ugly. Let me take you to the reservoir instead. We’ll go in the middle of the week, in the middle of a drought, the worst one in decades. When we get there we will be alone. The water […]
What have we to say that bears repeating? Statements that start out I love … or I’m sorry … those are best. The rest of speech will mostly miss the mark we aim for. Language frets free the instant syllables escape the lips: so little mercy from our mouths. Wonder is best expressed in music, […]
after Mark Rothko’s “Rust and Blue” I watch a woman who smells of Dior bare her hinged fist at a Rothko: My grandson could paint better. As she swings her hips toward Renoir, I want to catch her handbag’s strap and say, Look again. Here, my chest peals with iron bells, my sternum cracks like […]
You may not know this about me, but I’m pretty reticent. I am also an able-bodied white heterosexual male (read: abundantly privileged from the get-go). Speaking out and speaking up is a challenge for me, and it’s one I often let get the better of me. I am privileged in more ways than I know, […]
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