Once a year in Budapest the local government of each district has an event called “lomtalanitás” or “ungarbaging”, an opportunity for people to rid their closets and basements of anything that they don’t need. The dates are posted a few weeks ahead of time, time enough for people to pile things onto the curb outside their building in preparation for when the garbage trucks will come to whisk it all away.
I found out that my district’s date was coming soon when I was walking home one day from the elementary school where I teach English. There are a few homeless men who sit in the park at the end of my block. They play chess together in the afternoons and drink cheap wine from plastic bottles in the evenings.…
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offers me a map of the forest
leads me through it in a sandpaper suit
where each tree seems to know a different language
the ground grows spongy, sinks and then drops away
just roots and rocks and odd dark pools
and the hawthorn bristles in broad Scots:
each berry o’ mine is a planet
and lower: this wood is not for you.
An ash-tree is a great silver-green god
but all the gods are dying
black-tipped stems only show
once the rot has the trunk.
Greensands, gault and kimmeridge clay.
No compass points, there’s no signal
the map leads us both scrambling
from one low ferned branch to another
tall black cypresses whisper in Occitan
the maples in maybe Croatian
slippery leaf-mould and hart’s-tongue ferns
foxgloves fringe a clearing
round a huge service-tree
in autumn crimson and hung with bletting fruit.…
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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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