Surrounded by lavish mansions, the old beach cottage looks small, forlorn and utterly out of place on its water-front lot. A red estate sale sign is the only color in the withered front yard. A middle-aged woman sits on a bench in the entryway holding a wad of cash in one hand, her cellphone in the other. Lost in conversation, she smiles as I walk by on the sidewalk and waves me toward the front door.
It is mid-February and I’ve just escaped an Idaho winter for a short trip to Coronado Island, my Southern California home more than fifty years ago. The sun is bright and warm, the soft breeze fragrant with flowers and fresh-cut grass. During my morning stroll, I’m revisiting the neighborhood on the bay side of the island, near the navy base. …
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The doctor points to my beating heart
on the ultrasound screen like I should know
by sight whether that dark, wet shape
looks healthy. Outside, the sun disappears.
I passed the people wearing polymer glasses
on my drive to the hospital. When the pain
started, I pissed myself. The doctor assures me
I’ve got a strong ticker. This, she implies,
is despite my choices. My hunger,
my bird-bones, my body unable to bleed each month.
I used to be a real person, I whisper, watching
the squelching heart speed up.
I kissed girls & ate cheese fries & ran
beside the Monongahela River & believed
I would see multiple eclipses, in my lifetime,
long as it would surely be.
– Megan Williams…
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She deftly navigates the aisles of the flea market
without paying much attention to the furniture,
jewelry, rugs, posters, pottery, books, any of it.
Nibbling at a tissue-wrapped éclair in one hand,
she thumbs away at a cell phone game on the other
and, to the irritation of vendors and customers alike,
concurrently holds a conference call with speaker on.
She cuts deals, makes trades, accuses, cajoles.
A fluffy white Pomeranian on a leash of sapphire
beads is tethered to her gold lame belt. She lashes
out at Bob, Eveline, and Joanna, principals
at the main office in New York. Time is short…
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“Two men on base and it’s low and wide, ball three… a high fly to left field.” The announcer’s incantatory play by play magically emerged from my father’s miniature transistor radio as I played with paper dolls. The crowd’s roar would catch my attention and I’d ask: “Daddy, what’s the score?” During the week, I hardly saw my father since he worked late in his downtown law office, letting his dinner get cold, and annoying my mother. She stayed home, baked cookies and complained about her chores, suffering from the common malaise of fifties housewives.
Stalwart, religious and hard-working, my father gamely tolerated his two daughters and unhappy wife. Nightly he prayed according to Jewish Orthodox custom, swaying under his skullcap, facing east toward the ancient temple in Jerusalem.…
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The trail was steep.
As Sarah climbed, she pushed from her mind the mangled doe carcass she’d passed on the drive up. Instead, she embraced the growing distance between herself, and the road, and life back home in the city. The woods became quiet. The only sound was her breath and heartbeat, and the crunch of dry leaves underfoot. A gentle wind moved through the tall blue-green pines with the occasional low, slow whoosh. With every step, her mind stilled, the relentless waves of intrusive thoughts calming, so that the flotsam of ideas simply flowed past her.
After this weekend alone in the mountains, she’d find a way to reduce her workload.
She’d read to Theo’s kindergarten class.
Make more time to connect with her husband.…
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Sometimes all you have
To write on is the receipt
Back for a pair
Of books you bought,
And lines of poetry
Shorten accordingly.
Sometimes, in the finale of
Winter, flaxen lawns,
Ashen trees beneath
Chimney smoke, and
Scoured sand are
All the colors seated
In your world, and you wonder
What’s the warmth you
Find in so small a palette.…
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Upon release from the Army, Vernon was assigned to work as a custodian. The quiet ex-sniper with ivory skin and translucent, mint green eyes kept writing to Matias, the decorated solider with whom he had a love affair. Matias never replied.
Vernon mopped the floor of a bar on downtown’s outer edge where a raucous band played twice a week. He cleaned and wiped counters after liquor spilled from broken bottles and shattered glass. Wearing a faded gray uniform, he cleaned after patrons fought, bled and collapsed, motivating himself by imagining Matias walking in. After a few weeks, a gathering of gay men noticed Vernon. Clearing empty cans one night, he heard a voice. “You there, hunny,” one of the men called as he collected trash, “come over here.”…
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