When you cook for me, it is a full-bodied affair. The clang of the wok on your stovetop, countertop, worktop. Always smashing, pounding, your forearms straining as you design a meal and display the side dishes on the table: blanched vegetables in an avalanche of fresh chilli oil, small bowls of jewelled pickles, meat braised soft and fragrant. The shallow bowls are like cupped hands, and you always treat them with dignity as you push them closer, place choice pieces on my bowl of rice like an offering and I feel obligated to do more than smile in return. I want to bend over your feet and show you devotion.
Yet, as I set the table for your arrival, part of me is convinced inviting you to my flat for dinner exceeds the dimensions of our relationship.…
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It’s the third week of September 1992, and Lou doesn’t have to report for seven more days. But over the years managing a busy household and three children, I know to prepare ahead of time when something is important. Always leave time for the unexpected. A child with the croup. A flat tire. A meltdown with the kids. A husband going to prison.
Standing in our cozy kitchen, I stare at the papers Lou hands me. U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons typed at the top—a carbonless, triplicate form detailing the approved items for new inmates. The yellow copy for the inmate’s records. The pink copy for the guard at check in. The blue copy to be placed into the bag carrying the approved items.…
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Everyone called Cynthia, our church camp counselor,
Cinders even before she burned
my pink bikini in a big trash barrel
because I’d “left it lying on the bathroom floor.”
Branding me a rule breaker,
she slid her smoldering eyes my way
during our moonlit devotionals by the lake.
Those same eyes glowed with adoration
and envy when the boys’ counselor,
Donnie, led us all in my namesake song.
She snuffed out any spark of joy
lingering down in my heart.
I quit the church of my youth years ago—
misogyny was my reason.
I heard Cinders stayed,
married a man like Donnie,
a preacher who spews vitriol
about women keeping quiet in church.
Sometimes I imagine Cinders,
listening in a pew up front,
her gray eyes glistening with tears
necessary to dampen any scintilla of her fiery self.…
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What is the memory of some imagined loveliness? Flowers, certainly – and roses most assuredly – are lovely.
The chickadees are slowly walking, like tiny chicken hens, strutting, dancing through the blossoming dandelions … These calm chickadees are quite lovely. And, I would say, that my sister Evangeline, in her way, was lovely.
My sister Evangeline – that was her formal name – was a tall thin girl, all of 13 and a half years. No degree of happiness came to her face, because even at 13 Evangeline was a determined and accomplished girl. Rarely, when a smile would light her face, I knew what loveliness was; I could see that Mom was proud of Evy, not just because she was good at grooming the hogs for 4H, or her sewing, or her horse hiding abilities – no I think Mom loved her because she was a girl, soon to be a woman, and Mom, you could tell was proud of all 5 of her girls, and women in general; I think Mom felt that women got the short shrift of things, the short end of the stick. …
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If I were ever to distill my maiden voyage into adulthood into a single phrase, “cognitive dissonance” would capture the essence. However, to confine it solely to the realm of cognition would be a gross understatement. Oh no, it was a sad spectacle akin to a grand opera of the absurd where my lofty aspirations, steadfast principles, and lackluster realities engaged in a fierce battle royal, the only victor being the crushing weight of existential dread sprinkled with a dash of regret.
This general dissonance played across my life’s landscape in countless ways: Despite my bold proclamation as a straight-edge punk, disdainful of alcohol and drugs, I found myself nursing weekend-long hangovers, as if partying were an Olympic sport I unwittingly excelled in. Despite my noble pursuit of a vegan, cruelty-free ethos, there I was, in the aftermath of a bender, seeking solace in the greasy embrace of a fast food burger made from a poor animal that had certainly died for my sins; Despite my meticulous planning and anal-retentive tendencies, I’d always find a way to sabotage myself and veer way off course, letting chaos reign supreme until my carefully laid plans met a glorious demise.…
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The scorching tar, his raw kneecaps, the sun beating down on the exposed skin of his arms and legs and the nape of his neck; these are the sensations he will remember years later. Then he will spin yarns about boyhood summers spent in Appalachia, deep in the hill country of West Virginia. Now he is just focused on not pitching ass-over-teakettle off the eaves of this house. It’s hot up on this halfway shingled roof, and the biting flies and midges offer no reprieve to lofty souls such as Charlie Moore’s. Not that Charlie feels particularly lofty at present, sweating his balls off under the sweltering southern sun. He feels sticky and shaky and sour.
Mopping sweat and a crust of salt from his sun-tanned brow, he scans the hills and valleys that will hereafter become etched in the folds of his cerebral cortex.…
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I always feared the open sea
the shore on the horizon, too far to reach,
and the depth below that could encompass me.
that like a whale carcass I might sink to zero degrees,
to a lonely grave, the sinews of my bones leeched
away in the macabre dancing gravity of the sea,
blobs of fat and sponged skin, colored dark rosemary,
as it glistens in the distended membranes of benthic leeches,
all these depths that twinkle with their ability to digest me.
these detritivores drift then onward, unstable certophyllacaea,
wanderers without time, woven in existence foreign to speech,
predatory—a reason to always fear the open sea.
and wanted it too, though to a lesser degree;
to feel myself come apart and transcend some mortal breach.…
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