One November day, just after he’d bedded Emily, his wife timidly suggested
planting a walnut tree. He was the one who planted, tended and knew.
He consulted his specialized books and explained, in simplified terms, the factors
that ruled out the operation: inappropriate soil, early frosts, the voracity of
squirrels, the walnut prone to sixty-four diseases. Anyhow the garden was too
small for something that size. Marie-Louise, Albertine, Agnes, Madame Hardy and
all his other precious sun-loving old roses (he called them “my ladies”) would take
umbrage at the intrusion.
His final argument was that the walnut took fifteen years to bear. He didn’t add
that with his heart condition he’d never taste one of the walnuts, unlike her, ten
years younger and never so much as a sniffle.… ...continue reading
“My father was born on this day,
Though I know not the year,
I have never committed my name to a birthday card for my father,
Nor did he elect to commit his name to me.
I have compiled a concise collection of facts:
As modest as a grocery list,
As neutral as bread or jam.
His brother’s name is Martin.
his penmanship was a tragedy.
In my possession are two photographs,
Taken from a distance and an odd angle,
But still I see the strange, striking resemblance,
and it is striking to resemble a stranger.”
– Kate Healey… ...continue reading
I was there, a witness, saw the long-haired holy man
perform miracles in between ranting and raving.
Who cares if he smells like sheep, when one wave
of a scarred hand can bring a bus after I’ve been
waiting half an hour. Or a half-hissed prayer through
rotting teeth can provide a beautiful young woman
in a slinky red dress, also going the same way.
And what a phenomenon he has produced with
just the twist of a blood-shot eye, the squirreling
of a red nose… I have exact change and she does too.
So it really doesn’t matter that he speaks in a language
neither of us understand or that the Bible in his hand is
so battered, so dog-eared, that it begins with Psalms
and 1 Corinthians must do for Revelations.… ...continue reading
Before she wants to leave, life goes.
She dies a shrinking death.
Alone, asleep, no one comes close.
A tube gives her last breath.
One more walk, more vitamins, more pain
and she’d be here still— alive.
But every healthy act in vain.
Her wish: do not revive.
A quiet explosion scorched her cells.
Dividing tumor, too fast.
Her lips like broken shells
and face a sunken mask.
Hair gone and shivering in the sun
her skin as smooth as stone
she said, “Though chemo was fun,
I’m ready to be gone.”
Her lover on a plastic chair,
his hand strokes paper skin.
He’d fight to death if he could scare
the tumor from within.
One more walk, more vitamins, more pain
and she’d be here still— alive.… ...continue reading
Consider the embryo.
—no limbs at first, oval,
translucent, watery comma
—not a sapling stick,
more, its rain-soaked seed.
You said they were all boys,
—-those minuscule dead possibilities
swirling in a dark dysfunctional womb.
—They had to be,
as females are stronger.
Not quite convinced,
—-I dreamed pink party dresses,
tutus, first solo rides
—–on two wheels, giddy swimmers
adoring the ocean, sun, sand.
—I saw castle upon castle.
The first “birthed” in the john.
—-We looked for something with which
to fish it (him?) out – hospital’s orders.
Human, they said, and stuck me in a hallway
—-to bleed alone for half a day.
The second time, my mother visited,
—–but was uncomfortable with such despair,
———could not gather herself
fully into a chair.… ...continue reading
They are piling leaves and dirt from the desert and all day we watch from the
hospital out this window with this view of the hill and the saguaros and these men with
seven arms shoveling the fallen earth into ashy pyramids. Every now and then these
workers will look at the sky and shake their rakes toward the cumulonimbus. We wait in
the locked room till the doctors can decide what to do with us. We have already convinced
the psychiatrist of something.
The nurses are peering through the rectangular glass. They check our piss, ask the
simple questions: Where are you, what is your name, phone number? Why is your face
covered in paint?
We must have messed something attempting to go the extra mile.… ...continue reading
The Young Mother
Both can’t take time off to have the car inspected, so one must answer for the other.
Only sometimes, now and then, I decide. Like this morning. For the young mother with
the newborn and the toddler ramming his car into the counter grout. Her husband’s
been harvesting for three days straight, she tells me. In the middle of the night he’d left
a note scribbled on a donut sack: Get the Ford inspected, it said. She hands me the
paper-stuffed sack. What she doesn’t say–maybe can’t say–is that she’s desperate for a
break from her babies. A quick shower. A nap. I write or between their names on the
inspection form. I ask beforehand, do my clerk duty, but she doesn’t hear.… ...continue reading