There are so few people given us to love.
– Anne Enright
You may have heard that Vincent van Gogh sliced off his ear. It’s “common knowledge,” and it’s almost true —that is, it wasn’t the whole ear, and he didn’t give it to a prostitute either, (she was, actually, a housemaid at the brothel) but close enough. He did pass out from loss of blood and had to go to a hospital. And you may have heard he killed himself although, recently, there’s another story about that, but someone shot him in the stomach, and, of course, you know, that he was nuts.
Well, that, at least, is true enough.
But did you know that by the age of twenty-seven, van Gogh was done with finding work?…
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I was inside the bathroom, balancing blood on the back of my hand when there was a knock on the door.
“Yeah?” I asked.
He mumbled something. I balled up a tissue and placed it on the cuts and it drank like a vampire bat.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
Another mumble.
“I can’t hear you, buddy. Speak up.”
The tissue clung to my skin, so I used my free hand to slide the razor blade from the counter, open the drawer and slip it into the slit of the small tin box meant to house such things. It clanked inside, landing on top of the others.
“Can I have some milk?” he asked.
“I turned your show on,” I said. “Why don’t you watch that?”
I plopped the blood-soaked tissue into the toilet.…
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During the rains, the darkening rains,
I am floating above the flood,
waters beneath me, splashing my back.
The fish see my shoulder blades,
mistake them for wings
because I float in air. But I do not
fly. I travel on the water’s aura,
its color changing with my mood,
while the fish in crowded schools
complain about limited knowledge.
Oval clams stay tight, closed to my shape,
a silhouette against the darkening sky.
They speak in a fishy chorus, rub
scales against each other like blades.
Dark rain pelts my face, cold, stinging.
Black water at my back splashes warm,
inviting me in. But I hover above,
still without wings, stay in-between.
I do not swim or dive or fly.
I float. The only way I know to get by.…
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“Do you remember the couple we met at the Lalonde wedding,” Ellen asked, picking up a four-jar gift pack – Tandoori, Balti, two other labels Jack couldn’t read from where he stood – and examining it. She had convinced him to celebrate Diwali this year in support of their daughter Megan’s betrothal to Aarush, a med student from Jaipur. The thought of it gave him heartburn, the food, the possibility of meeting Aarush’s parents and celebrating a Hindu religious festival, penance Ellen exacted for his attitude toward their nuptials. Not that he cared about their religion, or any religion really. But Megan was only twenty-one and finishing her bachelor’s in music therapy. Aarush still had to complete two years of interning.
Now here he was following her around the aisles at Penzey’s Spices.…
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Our plans were made in the wake of disaster. We endured two hours on a 27-mile-stretch of stop-and-go roadblocks and hazard-flashing work crew trucks before reaching what we assumed was downtown Miami. The television aerials of chaotic devastation since the storm had been dramatic. But on the ground, the smells, the rotting food in the tropical September heat, the stench of decomposing carcasses of pets, backyard animals, and vegetation was overwhelming, not something film footage could capture.
We had driven eight hours total. The massive hurricane ravaged Miami two weeks prior and four of us, a professor, a realtor, an engineer, and me, a physician decided to volunteer with the cleanup. We had been close friends for twenty years. But now we were just church guys trying to help: Life is for service.…
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The third jump wakes the turtle, expatriate of the brackish backwater.
And when no one is watching, the tides – inch by inch,
neither salt nor fresh – erode my half acre. My half-life
spent sideswiping mile markers of gravel and tar
and spinning
spinning elliptically with inflated verve. Summoned
back not just to indentured space, but
slingshot to lace and latticework,
the familiar linens and pillows still holding
our heads’ heat and indented shapes.
All trace evidence,
all reluctant keepsakes.
I am a planet again.
I remember closing time when the cabana boys appeared.
They would gather the sodden towels arch with sifted sand
and roll their rickshaws along the boardwalk. The day ceiling…
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The isolated village didn’t appear on any maps. It existed just below the timberline, surrounded by stands of white pine trees. Less than four hundred people lived there and those who did had done so their entire lives. When or how the sundown to sunrise Skeleton Day ritual became a tradition was unknown. But it had taken place every seven years at the Winter Solstice for as long as anyone could remember.
Preparations for the observance involved every man, woman, and child in the village. In the week leading up to Skeleton Day, the men gathered small branches, large tree limbs. They also trimmed logs to be the main poles of the three bonfires they’d construct on the village common. Heavy with frozen sap, the logs had to be trussed up with ropes and dragged by hand across the frozen ground.…
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