Here in the Midwest, mystery is called lack, and adventure, lost. The Midwest, where questions become an arrow through the eye, and she must because she must because she must.
In Mary Henrietta Peters’ diary of Wednesday, January 5, 1927, while living in Iowa, she wrote, “… got a letter from Aulden he is all settled now W L & Vean B butchered a beef to day Cora Rothlisberger tryed to comit suside this morning about 4 oclock.
Sparse lanes and ordinary scenes. We’d lie if we said we didn’t tire of it. But gone are the gremlins of urban darkness, the noise and topics of debate roiling under umbrellas of revolt. We rarely miss them now, the roiling, the revolts, the rhetoric and the reasoning.…
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When Mina scrubbed a dirty toilet bowl, she didn’t think: shit. When she changed sheets with islands of stains or tossed wastebaskets with snotty tissues and bloody tampons, she didn’t think: disgusting. She just did her job, her mind elsewhere—which was why, throwing open the curtains in one of the rooms at the end of her shift and seeing the parking lot covered with snow, the in-ground pool a large white postage stamp, she was only mildly surprised.
In the hallway, she asked Renata how long it had been snowing, and Renata, wringing out her mop, said, “You no see? All day long.”
Some of Renata’s mop water splashed out of the bucket. Her black eyes flared, lips flattened.
“Good night,” Mina said. “See you tomorrow.”…
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After our argument I’m not ready to
be the one to make the first move
back to our comfort station
but I did buy a bag of your
beloved M & M’s
believing we will have sweet again
still my anger keeps me naming the
M’s in the waiting bag
monsters and morons
manipulators and mangles
manners and maturity
monkeys and manatees
then I remember how
thrilled you were to show me
the monkey you found
hugging the tree
I remember snorkeling together
giddily discovering the manatee
playing with his mother so close
to our hand holding space
is that you I hear coming
to my closed door
have an M & M
my most maddening
marvelous much-loved
magical man
– Susan Shea…
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I turned eighteen on a Sunday in September 1978, when the infamous German angel of death landed next to us on Broadway Boulevard in Yonkers, New York, as we went on our way to have a Chinese dinner for my birthday.
Our 1965 red Chevrolet Impala, sheathed in steel like a Sherman tank, was ancient compared to every other car we passed on the road that evening, though it still had enough American energy and spunk to wage an attack on the recently minted yellow Volkswagen Beetle idling beside us at the stop light.
Dad was a stoic driver, dying from a slowly growing tumor; mom, quiet in the back seat, worn down from taking care of my ailing father. Both too old, too infirm, and too tired to capture or kill a Nazi, even one as notorious as the malignant evil we encountered while cruising down a tranquil suburban street in the purple twilight of that fading summer.…
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With a hammer’s claw
I drew two nails out of the fallen sentinel—
beech tree, lying across the way—
freeing the trail-sign it wore in uprightness,
for transfer to a standing neighbor.
Next I dragged the newly-horizontal
out of the way of hikers, to recline and rot
into a different usefulness.
Last, I attached the sign
onto its new host, economically employing
the same two nails, one of them bent,
and left the tree to its obligation of guidance.
No beech, the chosen one
bled a little with this new responsibility—
to caution those who flee
the fleshpots of suburbia toward a promise
of uplands flowing with runoff
and the honeyed tones of mating songbirds:
“Unless you mean to bushwhack
your way through unaccustomed wilderness,
you need to turn precisely here.”…
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Freedom tasted like chunks of strawberry ice cream sliding down our newly-licensed forearms onto the leather car seats we promised my mother we’d keep clean. You screamed every time you merged onto the highway, the exclamatory shape of your mouth ringed with sweet berries and cream. The volume knob on the radio turned sticky from our iced fingers turning up the music so we could shout cheesy lyrics at each other, letting songs about living while we’re young get lost in the wind. We would fight over who got to drive to our weekly ice cream trip, but I let you win most of the time. You looked better driving my mom’s old minivan anyways.
Irresponsibility was whirled into the rocky road ice cream I ate at the Fourth of July party to try to mask the cheap taste of vodka searing down my throat.…
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You would never choose Cliff as your landlord, but our favorite gifts come unbidden.
This particular gift stood six feet, five inches, a pink behemoth with a Chow-Chow named Nugget. With a sweet tooth for the absurd and little to lose, he had purchased a farmhouse connected to the Eastbrook Post Office. Nearly every wall dripped with feral murals of vines and birds, cave paintings from a former resident without restraint. Spattered Spanish tile formed a yellow-brick labyrinth, and all the closets were the color of asparagus. Cliff would chop the house into four apartments. The USPS would pay him rent.
For $800/month including utilities, it would be my first home out of grad school.
Cliff was breathless the day I met him, a condition I would learn was his default.…
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