for Kiernan when my daughter’s tugged home—diminishing yellow skull a balloon blown beyond the western pond—the raspberry tang of shampoo seeps into pillows and futon; her tuneless whistle needles the hall; the torn, lacy hem of her soul nestles among Victorian dolls strung in hammocks along one wall. Porcelain…
Stone calcifies around it creating an impenetrable shell. In spite of its heaviness it floats somewhere in her body though she is never quite sure where until she stops to think about it. Probing, probing, hoping this time, this time that when she feels it bang against a rib or whack her heart, this time…
Uncle Lake and Aunt Bobette lived just off the La Loma bridge that crossed the Arroyo Seco. Right after the bridge, you made your first left-their house was classic Pasadena, a craftsman house with a low-pitched roof, exposed rafters, dark wood shingles, and a sleeping porch vined with wisteria and grape, drab green and idle…
The old year’s over. So, too, the old century, the old millennium. Two thousand years of Western Civ! . . . Finished, achieved, collapsed. Silly, of course, but it’s how people think. Some people (oh, definitely a smaller set) are wondering whether the shiny new millennium which has just begun will have much literary fiction…
When I smashed the plastic Barney plate to smithereens, bashing it over and over against the slate rim of the sink as yellow shards flew all over the kitchen floor, the children were upstairs, and I was thankful they hadn’t seen me like that, or been scared. I could sweep up everything, through a smear…
Why delay? Today I stopped to rub the fur, like the tender ear of a cat, stopped to stroke the lush gray plush (and oh, the pink!) as if the cat had rasped itself to frenzy, to an ecstasy of itch all raw this steak tartar, this chafe of meat, and because of this I…
Kai opened her eyes and looked around her. She was disoriented until she saw the Canadian customs booth in front, with the maple leaf decal on one of the glass panes. She realized she had fallen asleep, missing both the customs booth on the U.S. side and the Ambassador Bridge. Now she and Bailey were…
The millennial moment. We can’t know what it will mean, though we’ll live through it and be lived by it. But with the new millennium in mind, we’ve chosen for our cover Strong Winds, a painting by the Minnesota artist Kate Borowske, seeing it as an emblem of the moment — the poet, or fiction…
The year my father’s molar disintegrated was also the year my half brother died. The two were related. “Willpower!” my father said. “I will keep my tooth from decaying.” But decay it did. Every day he’d show us his molar as proof of the immense powers of his will. We saw the hole grow bigger,…
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