When Julia fell down the basement stairs of Emmaus House and bruised her hip so badly she couldn’t stand, I should have made her congee to help her recover. The dish is easy enough to cook, only slightly more demanding than toast. It falls in the family of comfort-mush including oatmeal, polenta, farina, and grits….
What do you see when you see red? My mind free-associates: the red-light district. Little Red Corvette. Chanel number 99. Van Gogh said that orange is the color of insanity. In The Scarlet Letter, red is the mark of adultery. And then there was the time I was gossiping in the upscale NYC hair salon…
“Success is never so interesting as struggle.” —Willa Cather My sister was like a mother to her boyfriend’s four girls from the age of seventeen until she was twenty-two. Her boyfriend, José, was one of the local drug dealers. He went to the Nebraska State Penitentiary for two years for dealing methamphetamines. When José…
Malcriado Mom pried off a press-on nail and dropped it into her purse. I watched: The bag rattle as our cab flew over another pothole on our way to the airport where we were dropping her off. Mom bragging to the cabdriver about how this was going to be my first time staying in Nicaragua…
Suddenly I’m remembering a public conversation between two Great Straight White Male Writers. We’ve all made the mistake of going to this event at least once, right? After Great Straight White Male Writer 1 reads, it’s time for the Q&A. This is where we’re supposed to find profound insight. The questions are always the…
February creeps. The date like a pregnant moon circled round on my calendar. But I do not even know what to wish for. When I tell my oldest friend this, she says, “Sometimes they shit bomb them,” thethey being other inmates; thethem being my father’s kind. She says this from a distance, as if…
1. Sweets My father was a dentist, so I was allowed only one sweet a day. The reasons for this restriction were not mysterious. The water in our town wasn’t fluoridated. When my father tried to convince his fellow citizens they should add this chemical to the well, they accused him of fomenting a Commie…
Syria is the country where I first began to hike. I had moved there from the US with my husband in the early 2000s to the approving nods of the elders of my family. Before then, I’d only gone on visits, to see relatives and learn the language. My move was supposed to be a…
1. I know where I came from, born up out of the half shell dog house, roof tin fence rusted right into summer. The bended sag of the wire gate, the warm rustled fur, the worn-down dirt, the dog shit, and all of us, blind pups and children, new in our bodies, snuffling for mothers…
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