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The smart money spent the summer— and left the poorer relatives agape, and sent the change in ash and oak, postmarked, laughs galore in Smoky Mountains, & seashore where she sold her shells & other things. The genre’s born of envy: If I were dead I’d write you still, and come to you, tapping the…

Back then I still believed it was possible to prevent certain things, until that hot afternoon. It was the middle of grain harvest, August of ’54, when Fred climbed down from his stalled combine and took off for Montrose to buy a part. Later I realized the part was a ruse of fate, like something…

And then I said, That’s what it means to testify: to sit in the locked dark muttering when you should be dead to the world. The muse just shrugged and shaded his blue eyes. So naturally I followed him down to his father’s house by the river, a converted factory in the old industrial park:…

for Angie and Darrell Our family came west from the plains; theirs came north from the desert. We met as neighbors at the intersection of aircraft factories and the Pacific Ocean in Hawthorne, California. “Join us for Thanksgiving,” they said. My husband and I and our two kids crossed the street with a platter of…

and green plaid shorts goes strolling through Juneau Park at eight o’clock with only a hooded yellow windbreaker for protection, trawling the bushes after work while tugboats crawl the dark freshwater outlook. Mist coming in not even from a sea, rain later in the evening from Lake Michigan, a promise like wait till your father…

“. . . I once took him to the train station in Minden, seventy miles away from our home, and the trains only go through Nebraska at night, the middle of the night, cause they plan it that way, cause I suppose Nebraska’s a dark passage no one wants to make awake and so I…