Is it too soon to murmur in her ear that I miss someone? The statue of liberty stands so still underneath a rainbow. She won’t mind if I play with the copper flame on her green torch. She can fool around with my liberated heart until it burns into ashes. Let me be the one…
Kenya, Africa. Africa! Nine thousand miles from Portland. My wayward son Tim walks toward me with four tall, dark-as-midnight women. He has seen me, I’m quite sure of it, but nothing about his gait changes. He arrives at the tent and doesn’t say a word, or make any motion toward me. The thirty or so…
Here is the paint-by-numbers painting of Sitting Bull’s pony she painted. Here is her imitation Navajo loom she used to weave turquoise blankets. Here is her afternoon martini shaker and the prescription Black Beauties. Mahjong tiles click rhythmically by arthritic hands of her bilingual generation. Outside the rain rains sideways, horizontal as this world is,…
Here in this little town in Pennsylvania where I spend half the week and the whole long summer, we are urged to buy local. This is a pleasure, not a duty or a difficulty. The rewards are multiple: sticking it to the multinationals, high quality merchandise, real personal exchanges. Becoming known. The place in town…
They drink their cocktails in the calm manner of their middle years, while the dim lights around the swimming pool make shadows of that world they’ve almost fully entered. Like Yeats’ wild swans their uneven number suggests at least one of them is no longer mated. Added up, their several ages are short of a…
Mrs. Greed had been married for forty years, her husband the cuckold of all time. A homely man with a notable fortune, he escorted her on errands in the neighborhood. It was a point of honor with Mrs. Greed to say she would never leave him. No matter if her affection for him was surpassed…
Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye, Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. When the pie was opened the birds began to sing, On TV the Bizarre Foods host leans over a rickety market stall in Bangkok. He picks at the toothpick bones of a sparrow, licks his lips and…
Her kitchen is filled with the neighbors’ dishes—all well-meaning, pity-stained, uncleaned. She can’t quite think, so she shuffles about the house, marveling at the strangeness. Touching the bill pile, a bruised spot in the oak banister, his fleece jacket on a coat rack, the cannon-shaped back of a wedding gift mixer, the crumbling scone on…
We are all intruders here though we fool ourselves this late winter day, carving a place on the banks to anchor our heels. We stretch over the water, hoping to slip onto the wings of a Great Blue Heron but afraid to get caught in the trap of reeds, twisting in the…
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