Chelsea, Massachusetts “Mrs. López refuses to pay rent, and we want her out,” the landlord’s lawyer said, tugging at his law school ring. The judge called for an interpreter, but all the interpreters were gone, trafficking in Spanish at the criminal session on the second floor. A volunteer stood up in the gallery. Mrs….
i. Do they hate each other, I wonder, she who will live on and he who is dying? I fill their bird feeder with safflower. Each dip of the orange pitcher scatters seed from its lip to the earth, in ecstasy. An arc. A small rain falls down. Bruised light a nacre over everything. My…
Two kinds of sand. One heavy, gritty, That falters moodily under your toes, like custard; The other, shiny weedy ribs, and further, Out of sight, the standstill sea. You tramp along In sunbonnet and spade, summer’s regalia. You choose a gray snake’s nest, slice into it, And yes, there are lugworms, and you…
1 Honey’s sweetness thins in steaming tea; a drop of honey thickens to amber on the pantry counter. Oh, the sweetening dank, the dark I inhale: come on the sheets on which my lover naps. A rolled-up paper uncoils in a whisper: come is a rose is a star is a monster….
She had strong views on Mrs. Humphry Ward, The Brontës, poor souls, women called George, Novelists known as A Lady. There was always An edginess. Whenever we went too far, Children or parent, she’d flare Oh you Fanthorpes! As if at some foreign breed. She lost some magic when she married us….
She was my Sunday school teacher when I was just seven and eight. He was the newly hired pastor, an albino, alarming sight with his transparent eyelashes and mouse-pink skin that looked like it might hurt whenever she caressed his arm. Since Eva was her name, to my child’s mind it made great…
Sprawled on the back of a flatbed truck we cradled hoes, our minds parceling rows of cotton to be chopped by noon. Dawn stuck in the air. Blackbirds rang the willows. Ahead, a horse trailer stretched across the road. Braced by youth and lengths of summer breeze we didn’t give a damn. We’d be…
“Si la uva está hecha de vino, quizá nosotros somos las palabras que cuentan lo que somos.” —Eduardo Galeano, El libro de los abrazos for Jane Miller It’s the mind that marshals everything into neat sequence in retrospect—subject, verb, predicate—fooling us into believing words don’t dig their tangled roots in us. But rooting around we…
When, how far back? When I played in a formal park, Grandmother watching from a bench, the chalky whiteness of the gravel glistening in the sun wiping away all that passed before me, indistinct summonings in the blaze, by contrast the deep shade from trees so dark I ran out from there fast as I…
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