On the first day, it came for my abdomen, that sharp pain like the point of a knife, teasing the edges of my pelvis. The type of pain that makes you weep, less from the hurt, and more from the attack deep in the pit, in the core of your body.
And the doctor smiled.
“All part of being a woman, I’m afraid.”
“Or someone with a uterus,” I corrected.
He nodded in that sympathetic way you nod when your grandmother tells you she just saw her childhood friend, the one who’s been dead for decades.
“Of course. In any case, there’s not much we can do except keep an eye on it. Take some ibuprofen and see if that helps.”
I cradled my stomach, pressing my hand to my lower belly as I listened to words about how complicated my body was for having a womb, a piece of faulty machinery that no one could ever seem to troubleshoot correctly, an unfortunate bit of wiring that I would have done better had I been born without it.…
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Mom grows stalagmites.
They’re made of toothpaste.
Drips from her cavern each morning
landing not quite into the bowl.
The basin isn’t out of reach,
but she’s forgotten to extend.
Or to spit. Just drip.
Mom used to be the neat one.
I was the messy one.
The eggshell stalagmite
matches the eggshell counter,
her myopic eyes seldom notices
the heightening mound.
It repulses my senses.
I don’t rush its removal
knowing it’ll eventually be missed.
– Dara Kalima…
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My mother died in the early minutes of March 21, 2012, just as spring was coming to its fullest expression in Birmingham, Alabama, the city where she was born, married, and had her children, and where she had lived her entire life. The foliage was a promising shade of bright green. The suburban lawns were visions lined with banks of azaleas in full bloom. The year was still young; as yet, the sun’s heat had no weight to it.
On March 9, she was diagnosed with bone cancer. How long she had had the bone cancer, her doctor would not suppose. What was known was that the bone cancer was a metastasis from breast cancer she had survived fourteen years ago. For the past twelve years, she had been cancer-free, but, as it was explained, breast cancer is sneaky and insidious and doesn’t give up easily.…
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A title:
when it comes
the poem will come too.
Where does he look?
Inside?
Outside?
All the world around?
Searching
for a title,
for a theme.
Desire is present
but no direction.
A poet in search of a title
is a sad, pathetic thing.
Does he search
through ancient tomes?
Or current fads?
Or some time in between?
dlh…
– Duane L. Herrmann…
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We funneled independently through the horde of mouth-breathers, school bell releasing us from monotonous lessons we’d mastered before the classes even began. Like a well-tuned machine we threaded expediently and stepped lightly, dodging shoulder throwing jocks and snickering goths and jazz handing theater kids. Our destination awaited us, a physical and mental safe haven: Mr. Pruitt’s classroom. Chess club.
We arrived within seconds of each other, chemistry posters on the wall welcoming us and promising a mental workout. After the day we’d all had, like every other day in public school, it was a relief. Immediately we got to work setting up the game. Kevin tossed three vinyl chessboards on the tables, unrolling them and checking for wrinkles. Ian laid out the clocks. David dropped bags of white and black pieces on each board.…
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Doorbell. Chimes came from two long brass tubes. Partially enclosed in an arched wall area, they looked pretty even when silent. A salesman was welcomed inside; he was offering sets of either Encyclopedia Britannica or Comptons. My mother invited him into the dining room, then poured coffee into a China cup she placed on a saucer. He sipped as I looked at the two ‘samples’ and knew which was the one I’d actually use: Compton’s Pictured Encyclopedia. Britannica was first issued in 1768 so definitely stood the ‘test of time’, as some teachers often expressed, the Compton’s, which debuted in 1922, got ordered. The salesman put the top back on his liquid ink pen, and handed my mother an invoice explaining when my complete set would be delivered.…
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Morning practices were always hard to stomach. Somewhat slowly, I made my way up to the big field at Parson’s. The sun, weak and silver, seemed to have gotten stuck about a quarter of the way up the flypaper sky. I’d left my hat in Hutch’s dad’s Cherokee, so I borrowed a back-up from the bin—a big rubber tub Hollings set outside his office—a tub that, along with extra hats, held practice jerseys, belts, and even one or two pairs of socks for those of us that, as Hollings said, might forget our hands if they weren’t attached to our wrists.
I always remembered my hands, but I grabbed a back-up this or that from the bin more often than I cared to admit.
As I approached the diamond, I noticed Hollings was already there busily arranging tees against the fence that ran from the end of the first-base dugout to the right-field corner.…
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