I almost died last night eating shrimp. That's how they diagnosed it at Mount Auburn Emergency after they'd shot me full of adrenalin. My heart fluttered, I couldn't keep my hands still, and I laughed and cried like a crazy person, my face swollen with hives, my throat closing. “I don't look like this,” I…
Fenton plugged in the coffee maker, primed and loaded the night before, then went to the front door to get the paper. The sun was up above the Patterson's garage, and the newspaper had landed on the top step, neatly folded and tucked. Fenton stood and smelled the air. Through the bathroom window on the…
Because he sometimes bored himself with thought my father taught himself things. Or because he was an American man, and back from Saipan, married early, stuck in a stupid job for the kids, and farm-chores after that. Or it may have been a kind of silent booze, he was so silent: sitting in the chair…
This chorus girl was pensive, Sadness was on her brow, Till she met her Sugar Daddy, And she's ex-pensive now! —from a Varga queen of hearts When Mister Mulryan called me into his office to “show me something,” I was lucky— all he flashed was playing cards, nude women in white cowboy hats, one with…
The woman standing at the right is Alice Fitzsimons Coffey. Those in the portrait with her knew her as Allie, but I think of her as Mama. Her black hair is pulled away from her face and secured at the crown of her head. Her mouth is straight, and her cheeks, even in this old…
If time is our sickness, dearest, health in the flesh would be a rare visit. I could believe it. Today when you called at five in the morning to say Delta flight seven. . .arrive. . .depart. . . I was already dreaming your voice. What I needed was your information. When you arrive it…
Apocryphal, the sweet Hawaiians, a few blue clouds like silk hooked on the shark-tooth Waianes, root-smell hanging in the rain forest, Honolulu damp with flowers: torchy African tulip, St. Thomas trees like giant, sorry, missionary lilacs, night-blooming cereus that have had their night, that shrivel at dawn like yellow sea-anemone a child collected on a…
As a boy I dreamed of striking out from earth into the black unbreathable not-even-nothing of outer space. As far as the awe of dreams allowed, I went. The earth dropped away like a turquoise ring into a bottomless lake. I was terrified but keen for adventure. I kept on until I came to a…
I'm not sure where it all began. Perhaps it was "Hure, hare, hure, commencement," a game my sisters Debo and Decca organized when we were quite small. Or, I should say, when they were quite small. I was never small and they always organized all the games. I don't know. Perhaps they were cleverer than…
No products in the cart.