All the same Filipina prostitutes from my youth showed up to Ma’s funeral. They arrived in business-casual black, arm in arm with men – haircuts high and tight – who looked very familiar. Some ladies cradled bouquets like babies. Some wiped their eyes with floral handkerchiefs, while others wiped their brown cheeks with their tiny palms. They all now had crow’s feet and grey hair and a few extra pounds that gave sign of them achieving their American dreams.
Tiya Wowwie was the only one to speak to me: “We gonna miss Ina Lucy. She mean so much.” I still thought of Wowwie as auntie because she was the one who often played trucks with me, read books to me, and fell asleep – also tucked into my Transformers sheets – beside me many nights instead of mingling with the drunk Air Force men my white father had invited to the parties.…
My friend did not have enough money for a broom. He only had a dollar fifty. A broom was four dollars. He needed the broom because he wanted to sweep the dead bugs off his floor. Bugs had a silly habit of dying in the middle of my friend’s room and staying there until somebody did something about it. My friend did not want to pick up the dead bugs even if they were wrapped in a tissue. That was still too close to the dead bugs for his liking. A broom was a good tool for dead bugs. With a broom he could get rid of the bugs while staying sufficiently distant from them. He could pretend that he and the dead bugs resided on separate planes of existence.…
The old man and his old dog walk slowly, their summer shadows stretched out long ahead of them. Behind them, the sun fights to remain in the sky even though it has lost this contest for billions of years and will soon, in a green flash, surrender to the night, only to rise up in the morning, born again.
For the old man, it is a short walk at the end of a long day and he will, like the sun, soon be on the other side of the world, out of sight and in darkness. For now, though, there will be shared food, the evening news, and time to rest in the chair by the window while he watches his old dog’s flank rise and fall with each breath.…
Two bald eagles soared overhead, circling each other as the afternoon sun started its decline, and we were on our backs, admiring the day, listening to the water clap against the hull of the Chubasco. The docks were still, and we looked at the row of sailboats bobbing in rhythm, slowed by the wall of tires and old wood that surrounded the marina. No one was in sight. The eagles flew to the wooded hillside across the bay, a fish caught in the talons of one.
“Do you think it’ll pick up? The wind?” Mary shifted her back with the hull’s subtle movement. Her brown hair, long as ever, splayed against the dirty white fiberglass.
“Eventually.” I stood and stretched. Eventually, this damned boat will be out of our hands.…
Dominque Carson is an award-winning community activist, journalist, researcher, and massage therapist. She’s written for NBC News, Ebony, Soultrain.com, and Singersroom.com, among other outlets, and has interviewed a wide range of artists, including Charlie Wilson, Patti Labelle, Tito Jackson, The Isley Brothers, and Regina Belle. Recently, she published a biography called Jon B: Are You Still Down? (which examines the life of R&B icon Jon B). She’s also working on a journaling project regarding the National Women’s History Museum, as well as her next book, The Invisible Betty Boop.
In this episode of Cover to Cover with . . ., Editor-in-Chief Jordan Blum speaks with Carson about her various career paths; her love of music, writing, and helping others; and how she’s been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.…
Their rakes lay forgotten. Stephen runs, red knitted cap, red cheeks, the little girls chasing, one wearing a brace on her leg. They dash through cut-glass air to tumble in the cold flakes of brilliant color piled thick from the woods … too many … like trying to rake in all the stars and clear the night sky. But we tried, all of us, ’til our arms ached even into sleep. In those days we burned great smoldering heaps, and the air was scented with smoke until after first snow. Stephen is ever aloft in this photo, one leg kicked back, one leaping ahead, and nothing, not one thing, I promise myself, has changed in all these years.
