On her first day at the American school, Glynnis’s class dissects earthworms. At her old school, the fourth graders dissected cow eyes that came delivered in a plastic jug. But here, the worms aren’t delivered. After lunch, the class has to find their own worms in the mud outside, then rinse them off under the…
I rode the Greyhound watching the twitchy things of the North give way to the sticky, bloodshot things of the South. No ground so burnt there’s not a church where I heard the Reverend Al Green amplify, rarefy, and glorify the word so that we were in some state of sweating July. The ashy black…
I agree with the central conclusion of all pop songs: you’re gorgeous and I’m angry. You walked into the party like the last thing you’d ever do was walk onto a yacht. In the hospital, I had time to consider the ever-so-slightly corrupt taste of your freshly cleaned armpits. I was always feverish to pry…
There was a storm— Nearly seven years ago— Julia and Lucas, living in California, they didn’t live together. She lived in her space, he in his. Lucas was finishing a degree at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, biding time; they were going to move to L.A. soon and get a place together. She was…
I’m tired, spent, really, but don’t say much, lean toward the rookeries, spirulina days, effect trooperish refrains, undelinquent and pressed, not hardy but persistent still, in a fading way, feel dunked, put upon, dry-hearted often in face of grief, bear trouble poorly, issue bulletins to the Dept of the Interior requesting stays and clarifications, sent…
Today I plant sassafras and pickerel. Tomorrow, wild sarsaparilla and checkerberry. Will they take root here? The crows enter my yard. They remind me of ink slabs Chinese calligraphers used—not until mixed with water did their black ink breathe and broth. Each morning, goat hairbrush in hand, they sat near willows, against a dropping moon,…
a novel excerpt It was a long road which he walked, and as it was the end of the dry season it was hot and dusty, and the heat rose from the orange laterite soil in simmered waves. Along the road to Boda there were palm trees and ebony and mango and papaya trees,…
The field believes profusely in its weeds. Who are we to intervene? Each evening lasts for days. We play whist and euchre on the porch. We practice sleeping without closing our eyes. Season of bing cherries and stained teeth, of unfenced cows lowing along the highway. And the river like a long dream, erasing its…
A whole lifetime in the middle, no wonder we crave and fear beginnings and ends. We want to see Highway 80 vanish into the Pacific waves, Tolstoy as a baby trying to hold a pencil. And this endless mess of photos, could that really be Grandfather dressed like a little girl, Mother with flowers in…
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