Article

  • Heart

    It's got me. Right in the heart all this— a nest— made of broken things— twigs and frayed string; all my talk is a prayer, my eye toward color looks out.

  • Short Story

    My grandfather killed a mule with a hammer, or maybe with a plank, or a stick, maybe it was a horse — the story varied in the telling. If he was planting corn when it happened, it was a mule, and he was plowing the upper slope, west of the house, his overalls stiff to…

  • Goodbye

    There was no air and then there was nothing else but air. This is called the filling of the lungs for the first time. The irreversible reverse of this is when my mother calls me and says: The flame fell off the candle just like that. And I say, Just like what? And she says,…

  • Used Books

    The danger in buying used books is the notes people leave in them— like leaves, brittle, and coy. This one, dated 1935, addressed: DARLING, signed: YOURS; apologizes for not being the French edition, DARLING, on the way to France. You are on your way to the coast. I gave you an oversized Russian history, which…

  • Visiting the Graves

    All day we travel from bed to bed, our children clutching home-made bouquets of tulips and jonquils, hyacinth, handfuls of yellow salad from the fields. In Pittsylvania County, our dead face east, my great-grandfather and his sons facing what is now a stranger's farm. One great-uncle chose a separate hill, an absence in the only…