“Wait for me,” Jimmy said to the taxi driver.
Jimmy eased himself from the taxi, careful to put his weight on his right leg. He swung his artificial left leg onto the sidewalk and limped up the walkway toward his parents’ front door. Despite all the therapy and gait training, at times of stress he could not walk without a limp.
His parents’ house looked the same: a square of yellow brick squatting behind a square of dandelion-infested grass. The picture window was still cracked. Duct tape still covered the crack.
Jimmy felt his heart palpitate. “Dear Lord,” he whispered. “Give me strength to tell them.”
Though he lived only a mile away from his parents, he’d rarely seen them since he’d graduated high school four years ago.…
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It’s a classy joint. There are white cloth napkins and real glasses. It’s a sharp contrast to the obscene plastic cups of frozen liquor and paper towel grease mops that’ve defined my Bourbon Street experience the last two days. I’m taking a gentlemanly sip of my Sazerac as my appetizer arrives. Boudin balls are fried crisp, stuffed with alligator blood sausage and rice, sort of a bayou arancini.
The upscale nature of the restaurant doesn’t redeem me. I can remember everything about the dancer last night, except her name. I table an interrogation of my post-strip-club self-loathing, trying not to think about it, which only means that I do. I look at my phone and the faces of the other diners, feeling out of place here sitting under the chandeliers, but the rye is helping.…
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The role allows him to charge into windmills
with a sly smile: was it a mistake?
He cultivates this persona
with people who don’t expect much from him,
this clumsy gentle giant with soft brown skin.
And when he messes up and smiles
they all laugh:
“Oh, Monster.”
And help him with his errors and work.
Monster cultivates this persona
with people who don’t expect much from him—
they happen to always be White—
because Monster knows they can see his size and skin
in two ways: threat or pet.
He chooses pet
because it’s something he knows
because he doesn’t know what he is with others like him but not
because he doesn’t know what he is
and the idea of being himself,
not acting a part, even as a fool,
is terrifying.…
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After a certain point . . . when? . . .
it seems we age at different paces.
See Parkinson’s effect on Don:
scientist, revered professor,
he struggles to say hello
or even hold a fork.
Then there’s dementia—
see what it’s doing to Jan:
once a nurse in the military,
her sweet smile belies her absence.
Supporting them in countless ways,
their spouses hover, preventing a spill,
stopping a fall, pulling them halt-
ingly into our conversations.
Granted some uncertain reprieve,
the rest of us reside in a separate…
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It was a blue-sky summer evening and I bounced on my heels and grinned. At seventy, I had finally made it to Paris. My husband and I eagerly waited in line to climb the Eiffel Tower. But the line wasn’t moving.
“I’m hungry,” I said, hoping for a view from the restaurant on the second level.
“Me too,” said Steve. “We’ll be up there just in time for sunset.”
At the ticket window, a Middle Eastern family waved their arms in the air. Nearby, a handful of Japanese tourists milled around wearing puzzled expressions. Then a man in a business suit appeared, shouting first in English, then other languages.
“The Tower is closed temporarily! You may wait at least an hour here or proceed to the exit!”…
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She received us with a fright, Lillibeth and me, her body half-hidden behind the door as she opened it. “I’m not ready for bed just yet,” she said twice. Mom had recently taken to fearing bedtime and would say this repeatedly before remembering me and that it’s not my mission to put her to bed. “It’s about time you’re here, Sassy,” she added, exhaling.
“Mom, have you had dinner yet?” She shuffled away from my question in her slippers and robe, plopping down in her armchair and taking up a magazine.
“I’m pooped, Sister” was her response as Lillibeth could be heard cranking open the can of split-pea soup in the kitchen. Looking over at Mom’s natural pine Christmas tree, I was surprised to see it was stripped bare of ornaments and lights.…
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When dating, I’d love to watch my partner
drop her credit card from her tanned hands
and attract the male Spanish-speaking servers.
She’d get frustrated they skipped her
Hawaiian name’s too-many successive vowels.
She’d adjust her inherited Hawaiian jewelry,
declaring her identity and anger at them
for jumping to connection with her Spanish last name
and not knowing Pelayo is Spanish from the Philippines.
Oh the struggle of mixed-race names
the ones that have stories behind them,
stories that are never read.
I loved her frustration, that impotence
you feel at being unheard but loved.
Love that makes it impossible to complain.
When we married, she took my last name,
hyphenated ethnicity and confusion.
With the added punctuation, she became
less of an individual
more connected to me.…
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