1. The motel over the bridge could be demolished as early as spring, and a dollar store there overlooking the river and what I saw—a woman propped between two men. Her body looked stiffly drunk or drugged the way she was hustled upright with the posture of a fence. Held up by the men, like…
Many years ago, I decided to make an adventure movie about my family that had nothing to do with me. The family would live in the trees and swing from room to room making the leaves whistle, making the birds flustered. They would live there all year round, even in the snow, and when it…
I knew I was back in New York when I saw children walking to school with books open in their hands. I’d lived away for fifteen years. Now down the streets of Brooklyn they drifted, novels spread wide between their palms, the actual world comprising a mere running margin of asphalt and high-heeled shoes and…
Each summer when I’m in Krakow, I make weekly trips to a flea market close to our apartment. This particular market also sells antiques, but it doesn’t aspire to a loftier name, because it also peddles secondhand books, last year’s issues of fashion magazines, handmade jewelry, items that aren’t old in the sense that antiques…
Diane stands on the bar of the trapeze, pacing and gesturing nonchalantly as a professor lecturing on the ground might. We stand in a circle at her feet, self-conscious in our leotards. We look up hopefully, with awe…we are hoping that she can teach us to fly too. I suspect that as little girls we…
From Years Ago, a memoir Tory Fukada showed me how to crank the corners and I practiced, abandoning the graceful strokes of cursive she’d also taught for the bold design, which seemed meant to be carved but smoldered like a brand. Dozens whirled like pinwheels on the barbed-wire page. I loved the prickly maze, the…
A map unfolds into a world where new poems, new ways of writing them, a new way of living, become possible. My turning points have included the discovery of the city of Istanbul, where I spend a few weeks every year, and my eventual immigration to Ireland, where I now live. With an accent instantly…
I began naming my children when I was four. The habit launched itself via the succession of dolls that were quickly discarded, and the numerous stuffed animals exhausted from affection. There were also objects like the secondhand family car and the rubber plant. Sometimes I named tools like pencils, or apparel like shoes. Naming was…
Siba keeps shaking his head as if pushing a vision away. His chest is heaving, tears are spilling down his cheeks, but he is silent, choking back any sound. We are walking west on East Eighty-sixth Street, the leafless trees of Central Park a few blocks ahead. We move under a green awning and past…
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