Valium, Librium, and Tylenol with codeine—that’s what Velma the head nurse at the Florida House of Representatives would dish out when you came in with your period, a hangover, a cold, a broken arm, a hangnail. She called it the Triple, as in It sounds like you need a Triple or That calls for a…
On a good day, surgery lasts three minutes or less. Today’s takes longer. Kathryn has an audience. They don’t touch the fish at this point—they try to handle them as little as possible—but for the girl, Kathryn makes an exception. She wets her hand in a clear plastic bucket and lifts the stunned fish from…
Of late, I have been collecting vintage radios, a distracting hobby that I am mostly ambivalent about in comparison with sincere radio enthusiasts, which explains why I only own a handful. They are scattered throughout my house. The Fisher Model 100 sits regally aged in the living room between the fireplace and my bay window…
That’s how much time they give you to bribe the hall of records for the paperwork you bribe the foreman to sign, swearing you know nothing and owe nothing—no loans, no debts before you bribe a woman to sell your pots and pans, plates, plants, rugs, and record player, so you can bribe a dentist…
When I saw her in her urban kitchen— thin and smart in her charity-shop green dress— a glass wall was between us polished spotless with some soft cloth of mistrust. All winter she’d lived up the hill in the gray house with the damp walls, the rains fading the fields. The snow— its ice-floe memories…
I’ve watched this ultrasound so often I close my eyes and picture a daughter feathered with pixels, a putto’s skeleton. So here is a piece of art I own, a representation any impressionist would be proud of for it moves, though it doesn’t yet move me. But I do return, so she has achieved what…
Before she told me, she let me finish my dinner. I can still see the pinkish cream sauce blossoming on the china. I didn’t know yet if I could walk when I pushed myself back from the table. This is what gets me: I didn’t throw the stained dish against the wall. I slipped the…
Why are people wearing antlers in the hospital cafeteria? —Because it’s Christmas, silly. Can’t you hear the sleigh bells drifting down like pesticide from all the hidden speakers? Mr. Johansson says he doesn’t get paid enough to wear a Santa hat, but everybody else just goes along with it. It’s winter, the elevators ding, the…
I go around and turn the pages—the newest news—for the paralytics on the porch. At least the day isn’t hot yet. So says only a gleam in an old man’s eye. A bee zeroes in for the kill. I roll the ladies to the shady side. No one wants word of war. They go for…
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