A single shout and you were not the one I thought you were. Cowed by stoplights, horrored by the barking muses. I would never get over those boss-beaten days. Mile long arms. A city dense as a broom closet with a baby in a basket. The Judas in the eyes of passersby. One spot of…
Mama Elsie's ninety now. She calls you whippersnapper. When you two laugh, her rheumatism Slips out the window like the burglar She hears nightly. Three husbands & an only son dead, she says I'll always be a daddy's girl. Sometimes I can't get Papa's face Outta my head. But this boy, my great- Great-grandson, he's…
Stand up, stand up for JEE-zus! my father sings, my brother and I stand in the tub shivering as he scrubs our privates: the year is 1948, Raleigh, the moon slips clear of the tulip poplars, then the rough back rub with clean towels, first one and then the other and then to bed, If…
The Cohen twins. I wish I could erase them! The two demons . . . never more demonic than when on their way to Catholic School in Hyde Park in their uniforms, the blousy white shirts and gray slacks and medallioned blazers they never removed even after school, and wore even on that fatal—final—afternoon. ….
The question he so casually raises, hand fisted on slim hip, is What endures? The small terra-cotta figure shows the rough brown beneath the smooth black in random places; a chip on his shoulder, a small bite taken from the stylish behind. But he endures, gracefully. More than that: mockingly. No one his age should…
They arrive in the blustery summer twilight, couples in coupes, roadsters, and touring cars, up from Falmouth and Hyannisport in Palm Beach suits and taffeta weave. There is dancing to Paul Whiteman and Alice Fay. What summons our attention—my mother-in-law told me this—is not the soft flags luffing at each high corner of the pavilion,…
1 Half awake, pawing at the night table for The Book of Great Conversations, I knock the bottle onto the floor. The sound hangs there: there's a ringing part of it and a shattering part of it and a splashing part of it. I smell the gin. Well, it can stay there until I feel…
Eulene’s lover wakes with a start. Something missing: woman, money, watch, gun. His life deciduous as October at the business end of a pawn ticket. He’s always been embarrassed by cross hairs and calibers and the biggest hits by the Sex Pistols. “Step on Your Watch” the last song before the radio signed off. His…
"Is this Lorraine Hennesey?" the woman wants to know as I lift the phone up to the bed. It's 3 A.M. Hennesey? Hennesey is the name I acquired in my second marriage-still a little strange even after two years. Especially in the middle of the night. "Yes?" "Who is it, Lore?" Sam asks from behind…
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