My father loved her, or rather, wanted her. Gaudy and baubled, with long nut-brown legs, and sun-blazed hair; yes, he wanted her, bad, and the bitch knew it. She was twenty-five, he was fifty-two, I was eleven, mother was dead. The night it happened she was drunk, dinner was over, the dishes were catching flies,…
As if the porous bag had been dipped once, twice, once more in the summer’s water, then set aside. Halfway between sleep and waking, I took it between my lips. And though the earth is everywhere terrible and cruel, the heart diamond flashed out once, twice, and once again the semaphore-reply it cannot help but…
This is my tale about the Vietnam War; at least I think it qualifies. This story, however, comes no nearer to Phnom Penh than 10,000 miles: blame this lack of action on my year of birth-1954-and blame it on my gender. A muddy river does appear later on in this story, and you’ll see a…
1. Everything we ate was on foot. We didn’t have the Norge or the Frigidaire, only salt to keep. Autumn’s hog went in brine for days, swimming. You had to boil forever just to get the taste out. I loved winter & its chitlins, but boy I hated cleaning. If not from the hogs, we…
There is a fish that stitches the inner water and the outer water together. Bastes them with its gold body’s flowing. A heavy thread follows that transparent river, secures it— the broad world we make daily, daily give ourselves to. Neither imagined nor unimagined, neither winged nor finned, we walk the luminous seam. Knot it….
There was a beautiful young woman named Shining Agate, the oldest of three daughters, and she was very proud. Always, she insisted that her hair flow loose and free of tangles, that her dress be sewn from the most supple skins, that the meat of her soup be tender and cut into very small pieces….
Summers meant peeling: peaches, pears, July, all carved up. August was a tomato dropped in boiling water, my skin coming right off. And peas, Lord, after shelling all summer, if I never saw those green fingers again it would be too soon. We’d also make wine, gather up those peach scraps, put them in jars…
But did we not Mint our excuse to sin, And nurture it to our advantage? Now here, now there, Like drops on a pond Shot by the needlegun From the silt to the surface; now The mechanism of our thought Leaps in reverse Like that hid engine of the waterworld. Philosophers all, then we pray:…
Marquette Henley’s stepson, Lance, had always been a distant boy, dull-eyed and solitary, not at all like the eager young athletes Marquette waited on in his store. Lance spent most of his time watching television with the lights off and the curtains drawn. Blond and pale-eyed, he had skin that seemed to whiten with each…
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