which is a biographical fact only ever stated when discussing a man of either unrivaled righteousness or extreme wickedness. Imagine this: He never once used a bell in his saliva experiments, unless you count the plink of kibble falling from his dogs’ surgically opened throats, and why would you want to count that? I…
We bought the nylons before evening prayer at a twenty-four-hour grocery three miles away. They came folded inside paper envelopes, tawny mesh showcased under cellophane windows. We bought a dozen. They tend to rip. Later, we disagreed about whether the envelopes could be recycled. If paper’s affixed with plastic, is it still paper? Eventually, we…
A term given to us by Franz Gall, father of phrenology, the lost art of God’s failure to erase each ridge and bump from your skull. For which Gall invented his method to codify God’s errors: a bump for adventurers and a bump for homebodies. A bump for the vicious and a…
Lugging a corpse with you everywhere you went. Strapped to your back. Slumped in a wheelchair. Dragged on a sled or pulled in a red wagon. The corpse keeping you focused on your mortality. Reminding you that ultimately you’re just a corpse. At first it was a fringe thing. Hipsters only. Then celebrities got…
I’m stepping into an espresso bar, fragrant with strong coffee and sweet cornetti, when my attention is drawn uphill by a weathered pink-and-green sign offering a vacancy at Il Piccolo Tesoro. The small treasure. I’m not greedy. The adjective appeals as much as the noun promises. I chose this Ligurian village in the sensible way,…
for C.P. What to do with all this flame but douse it with paper cupfuls of red and yellow pills. What to do with the sun that licks its rose blaze in the tiled corners of this ward, with the hours, with the burden of relief we’re allowed to feel. We still breathe. We…
He said he would hang himself so as not to make a mess. But he was still there the next day. And the next. And the next. He wrote the note for the cops on a page he tore from my favorite book of poems. That’s all I saw of it— in…
I don’t remember wearing it to school or after dark to the Halloween party where apples for bobbing floated in tubs. I don’t remember staring in the mirror to admire myself in the half- mask, white blouse and black skirt, the fabled red hood gaudy with sequins. My father paid…
Three days after my chemo infusion, the hospital Chapel’s framed inspirational words wishing us well in moving forward, I send myself flying with frozen lips and bad ski equipment, arms and legs dragging against the winter’s cold molecules— no longer regretting the frilly white gift saved from the affair in Vaduz that I…
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