Everyone called Cynthia, our church camp counselor,
Cinders even before she burned
my pink bikini in a big trash barrel
because I’d “left it lying on the bathroom floor.”
Branding me a rule breaker,
she slid her smoldering eyes my way
during our moonlit devotionals by the lake.
Those same eyes glowed with adoration
and envy when the boys’ counselor,
Donnie, led us all in my namesake song.
She snuffed out any spark of joy
lingering down in my heart.
I quit the church of my youth years ago—
misogyny was my reason.
I heard Cinders stayed,
married a man like Donnie,
a preacher who spews vitriol
about women keeping quiet in church.
Sometimes I imagine Cinders,
listening in a pew up front,
her gray eyes glistening with tears
necessary to dampen any scintilla of her fiery self.…
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What is the memory of some imagined loveliness? Flowers, certainly – and roses most assuredly – are lovely.
The chickadees are slowly walking, like tiny chicken hens, strutting, dancing through the blossoming dandelions … These calm chickadees are quite lovely. And, I would say, that my sister Evangeline, in her way, was lovely.
My sister Evangeline – that was her formal name – was a tall thin girl, all of 13 and a half years. No degree of happiness came to her face, because even at 13 Evangeline was a determined and accomplished girl. Rarely, when a smile would light her face, I knew what loveliness was; I could see that Mom was proud of Evy, not just because she was good at grooming the hogs for 4H, or her sewing, or her horse hiding abilities – no I think Mom loved her because she was a girl, soon to be a woman, and Mom, you could tell was proud of all 5 of her girls, and women in general; I think Mom felt that women got the short shrift of things, the short end of the stick. …
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If I were ever to distill my maiden voyage into adulthood into a single phrase, “cognitive dissonance” would capture the essence. However, to confine it solely to the realm of cognition would be a gross understatement. Oh no, it was a sad spectacle akin to a grand opera of the absurd where my lofty aspirations, steadfast principles, and lackluster realities engaged in a fierce battle royal, the only victor being the crushing weight of existential dread sprinkled with a dash of regret.
This general dissonance played across my life’s landscape in countless ways: Despite my bold proclamation as a straight-edge punk, disdainful of alcohol and drugs, I found myself nursing weekend-long hangovers, as if partying were an Olympic sport I unwittingly excelled in. Despite my noble pursuit of a vegan, cruelty-free ethos, there I was, in the aftermath of a bender, seeking solace in the greasy embrace of a fast food burger made from a poor animal that had certainly died for my sins; Despite my meticulous planning and anal-retentive tendencies, I’d always find a way to sabotage myself and veer way off course, letting chaos reign supreme until my carefully laid plans met a glorious demise.…
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The scorching tar, his raw kneecaps, the sun beating down on the exposed skin of his arms and legs and the nape of his neck; these are the sensations he will remember years later. Then he will spin yarns about boyhood summers spent in Appalachia, deep in the hill country of West Virginia. Now he is just focused on not pitching ass-over-teakettle off the eaves of this house. It’s hot up on this halfway shingled roof, and the biting flies and midges offer no reprieve to lofty souls such as Charlie Moore’s. Not that Charlie feels particularly lofty at present, sweating his balls off under the sweltering southern sun. He feels sticky and shaky and sour.
Mopping sweat and a crust of salt from his sun-tanned brow, he scans the hills and valleys that will hereafter become etched in the folds of his cerebral cortex.…
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I always feared the open sea
the shore on the horizon, too far to reach,
and the depth below that could encompass me.
that like a whale carcass I might sink to zero degrees,
to a lonely grave, the sinews of my bones leeched
away in the macabre dancing gravity of the sea,
blobs of fat and sponged skin, colored dark rosemary,
as it glistens in the distended membranes of benthic leeches,
all these depths that twinkle with their ability to digest me.
these detritivores drift then onward, unstable certophyllacaea,
wanderers without time, woven in existence foreign to speech,
predatory—a reason to always fear the open sea.
and wanted it too, though to a lesser degree;
to feel myself come apart and transcend some mortal breach.…
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Who is Poe, Dickinson, Thoreau? I stutter these names on the outside chance that they will fit the Jeopardy clue: This poet won four Pulitzer Prizes. My brother Stu mumbles, “Frost,” and he doesn’t mean the icy stare I give him for knowing the correct answer, once again.
Watching Jeopardy ends a typical family day in Brooklyn—one in which our mother forgets her grandchild’s birthday, my brother suffers a panic attack triggered by his twenty year-old shih tzu’s chronic constipation, and my sister’s car, running on empty, breaks down on the Belt Parkway–her cell phone in the purse that she forgot. However, no matter what the day delivers, at 7 PM my siblings and I gather in my brother’s cluttered living room to watch Jeopardy. Though…
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The feeling was one of relief, not gratitude.
There were the familiar aspects of flight: velocity, height,
measuring distance, and seeing so much, again,
of the world as it should be.
She circled them once, in the clearing,
not as an act of farewell or defiance
but in a final effort to
understand these strange creatures.
Despite the searing pain at the time,
the injured eagle fought them at the start,
then learned in her captivity that
survival would require cooperation.
They had touched her and fixed things.
They had watched her, and even fed her,
and sometimes the touching, though unwelcome,
was strangely reassuring.
And as she flew madly above the green landscape
of summer, she did not circle back again
and could not hear her rescuers cheering
and did not care that they had given her a name.…
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