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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The child takes us Mason-jarring
out where the backyard meets the woods
Soon each jar contains a nondescript black beetle
of uncertain entomology duly given
a name such as ours
At supper call we two adults assure
that Mike and Ike and Lucy are released
back into their usual less confining environment
and forgotten
Freedom is a simple gift to give another
yet if I were to be kept anywhere
I would prefer a grownup girl’s memory of me
to a Mason jar
as like Ike Black-Beetle
I crawl the world’s backyard
under or over blades of grass taller than me
hiding from sun and sparrow
– Russell Rowland…
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Kannika loved buffalos almost as much as she loved ice cream.
“Buffalos are stupid and stubborn,” her father said. “Only good for hard work and keeping the grass down.”
Kannika paid him no attention when he said things like that. She knew better.
He was a grumpy old man with a sour heart. She couldn’t even remember the last time she had seen him smile. She wondered what her mother saw in him. In Kannika’s eyes, her mother was the most beautiful woman in the district. Her beauty and grace were famous, her kindness unsurpassed.
When she wasn’t at school, Kannika was helping her father in the fields. If it were up to him, Kannika wouldn’t be allowed to go to school, but her mother insisted she needed an education.…
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In the earnest 1990s, I ran with a pack of good boys who aced AP Physics and fancied themselves feral.
The sincerest member of the stable, with the straightest laces and the thinnest wrists, owned no fewer than ten NO FEAR shirts.
Geriatric millennials remember these vividly: atop the image of some apex predator with its mouth open, were the words, red in tooth and claw: NO FEAR.
These shirts were evergreen on Sam, but they overtook his stick-insect frame in January. This was when I decreed our Banish Winter Campaign, a faintly successful annual attempt to get my best friends to wear their brightest colors each Monday.
But my three best friends, as soft-spoken spokeswolf Sam explained, were boys. And boys. Didn’t. Wear. Bright. Colors.…
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On my way to the countryside, I pedaled through what’s known as Hollywood, a cluster of shacks at the edge of town. They listed to the side, had gaps between the sideboards and looked almost as if a stout summer breeze could flatten them. It was said some still had dirt floors.
As I approached the place closest to the street, I could see that the yard was a mess of weeds, patches of dirt and concrete yard ornaments broken beyond recognition. There was a mongrel with swollen teats and a guy sitting on a lawn chair. He had a cigarette pack rolled in the sleeve of his T-shirt and appeared to be soaking his feet in an inflatable wading pool. A young girl in a feed sack dress was playing hopscotch by a wash tub at the side of the road.…
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“Wait for me,” Jimmy said to the taxi driver.
Jimmy eased himself from the taxi, careful to put his weight on his right leg. He swung his artificial left leg onto the sidewalk and limped up the walkway toward his parents’ front door. Despite all the therapy and gait training, at times of stress he could not walk without a limp.
His parents’ house looked the same: a square of yellow brick squatting behind a square of dandelion-infested grass. The picture window was still cracked. Duct tape still covered the crack.
Jimmy felt his heart palpitate. “Dear Lord,” he whispered. “Give me strength to tell them.”
Though he lived only a mile away from his parents, he’d rarely seen them since he’d graduated high school four years ago.…
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It’s a classy joint. There are white cloth napkins and real glasses. It’s a sharp contrast to the obscene plastic cups of frozen liquor and paper towel grease mops that’ve defined my Bourbon Street experience the last two days. I’m taking a gentlemanly sip of my Sazerac as my appetizer arrives. Boudin balls are fried crisp, stuffed with alligator blood sausage and rice, sort of a bayou arancini.
The upscale nature of the restaurant doesn’t redeem me. I can remember everything about the dancer last night, except her name. I table an interrogation of my post-strip-club self-loathing, trying not to think about it, which only means that I do. I look at my phone and the faces of the other diners, feeling out of place here sitting under the chandeliers, but the rye is helping.…
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