We are all that child, knees pulled to our chests against the darkness, hiding secrets. I’m not talking about subterfuge or concealing indiscretions or even the emotions we brush from our sleeves. I’m talking about the parts of ourselves we know but don’t know we know. I’m talking about latency, about personal tectonics. I think telling stories is one way to bring those plates towards collision. Philosophers and artists, those subjects of erudite deconstruction in the finest schools, they’re just working it all out too but in refined methods of logic and form. So too the grizzled raconteurs chewing their cigars to pulpy nubs in the back rooms of pubs, the coffee shop bloggers, bar napkin songwriters, three-times-a-day-dogwalkers, children elaborating plots, even that guy in front of the Sencha Tea Bar in Madison who just free flows for hours, all that rhyming angst oozing from his pores, covering him in a veneer of sweat, a polyurethaned poet – we’re all coaxing to the surface the tiny sliver beneath the skin, the sharp point of which jabs, jabs until, finally, we tweezer the damn thing out.…
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I need to pack, but I find myself doing anything to avoid it. I’ve scrubbed the sink and polished the silver. I called my brother, for God’s sake.
I used to like to pack. She taught me how to pack. Then I killed her.
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1. Wear your heaviest clothes—coat, jeans (If you must have jeans…),
running shoes. (If you really think you’re going to run….)
2. Decide on one-two-three-four. (One jacket, two bottoms, three undies, four tops.)
3. Roll. (Folding is for novices.)
4. Compress. (You can’t go wrong with Marmot bags.)
5. Fill a quart size baggie with three-ounce containers of Grey Goose. (Ten will fit if you’re creative and committed.)
6. Pack. (Voila.…
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I try not to forget those days at home,
Though I would not like to live them again,
Alone with the chores and a currycomb
I used to groom Gray among the chickens
That ran out in the barnyard and mule-lot,
For telling you these details, I’m afraid,
Only makes any point I sharpen rot
Before it’s ripe or, on arrival, dead.
Reveries under the shed’s overhang
Close in on truths unbeholden to me,
Scrunched against the wall, sun sweet as sea tang,
The dew, too, dripping from the tin a spree
I cannot sing except to say it’s so.
Childhood, the goose-pimples, moments of bliss
I sense from decades back, gains my long row
I keep on hoeing while I reminisce.
It all comes to not knowing who I am.…
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“I’m not getting married at 23.”
Hearing this, my perpetually obedient sister looked to our mother, awaiting her response. The kitchen, a historically feminine domain, was no place to make such declarative statements, but I didn’t care. I have always known what I wanted out of life, and it didn’t include getting hitched before I obtained my medical degree. But as my mother calmly shut down that conversation, I realized we would never agree on the role of women in modern society. So within this concoction of differing perspectives lies my belief that women deserve equality, but men are not entirely to blame for societal inequities. While recognizing the dualities of feminism and toxic masculinity, I pen this love letter to those of us who are in the middle.…
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On the side of the road, the crows gather. They dot the berm—little robed monks in modest black. Picking and pestering. Cawing and careening. Communion is a smattering of roadkill possum.
Take this and eat of it. This is my body, which shall be given up for you.
They partake with reverence: brief flutters of wings, tender peckings, and silent blessings.
A rust-colored smear on the grey highway leads to the offering—who is covered now—shielded from the eyes outside the avian parish by black feathers that become a living funeral shroud.
Take this and drink. This is the blood of the covenant which shall be shed for the forgiveness of sins
The birds drink of it and ascend, singing hymns, wings alight. The possum is brought to the heavens in the mouths of nature’s faithful.…
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George arrived at the office a few minutes early this morning, so he headed over to the employee break room to grab some breakfast before starting his day. The hardwood floorboards swished cold and smooth beneath the soles of his bare feet, and from the way the wintery chill seeped into his skin and settled into the marrow of his aching knees, he could tell the new office manager had forgotten to turn the heat on.
A few moments later, George stepped into the employee break room. Here he saw a man sitting at the lunch table, eating a bowl of corn flakes. George had never seen this man before, but from the rumors he’d recently heard floating around the hallways, he figured this had to be Greene’s new office manager.…
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Jaramillo kept a picture in his wallet of Borges and him, a picture taken on a rainy black-and-white Bogotá afternoon. The young man and the old, the lover and the master. That must have been his proudest moment, for the grin with which he shared it with me could never match the pictured grin. I thought them beautiful; I thought Bogotá beautiful and mine for a moment. What does it mean to meet one’s hero? What thoughts must have stilled and then exploded in his head? What fog in the background, fog that led to low and sinister concrete homes that led to mountains.
Jaramillo introduced me to Borges when I was just a college sophomore, a year when the power of the imagination hinted at me but withheld itself.…
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