This morning I want my grandmother, who died two decades ago, to boil rice and cook eggplant curry for me. I have visited my parents’ home in the village many times since her passing, and she is missed every time. But this time, it feels different. The sun has risen as it always does, but it seems to have acted anachronistically. I haven’t had my meal prepared by my grandmother yet, and I’m about to leave for my high school. It does not matter that I’m not a fourteen-year-old schoolboy anymore, nor that I’m visiting my school as a guest, not as a student.
“It’s easy to go to school these days,” my mother says, handing me a stainless steel tumbler, carefully, with both hands.
“That’s good, Aama,” I say. …
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I guess wherever a man stands becomes the moral high ground, less about altitude, more conviction, boots on ground, the cool rational marble of thought, they hate gossiping too, or at least what we call that way of living in the world when women do it, which of course makes it wrong, you get it, they don’t understand the need for it, emotionally of course, but also biologically, survival skill, instinct, I need to know what’s happening to the fifty or so people in my world, hunt love, gather grief, I want to know and I want the privilege of being told, secrets whispered under low lights, over popcorn and wet nails, shifting alliances, not always mean, no, but sometimes, sure, but we know where our lines are, we’ve been tip-toeing around lines in the sand our whole lives, were trained in it, our lives are lived exclusively on the knife thin line between victimhood and power, Madonna and Whore, all of them, the big ones, the little ones thin as thread, frail as uncooked spaghetti, and we’re towing some lines and smudging others, and you can’t see it yet because you’re not a part of it.…
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There. There it is. I see it. There’s the mist, blowing left to right. It drifts over the ground near the huts. The four soldiers emerge from the mist like ghosts, their rifles ready. The villagers stay inside their huts even though they’re on the same side. They’re scared. No, why? Why are they scared? The wind blows. A soldier whistles. An old man and woman come out of a hut. A spooked and nervous soldier shoots them. No, why? Other villagers come outside. The soldiers shoot all of them except for the children. The soldiers set the huts on fire and take the children into the bushes. No. Another patrol comes along, sees what the soldiers are doing and shoots them. No, that’s not right.…
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Just after noon,
at the intersection of Mission and High streets, I saw her at
the wheel of a tan SUV. The red light held us both, each
vehicle facing the other.
With an Oregon gray-winter-solstice-zombie stare, her eyes
looked ahead at Nothing.
I knew her in the ’90s. She was a Mormon . . .
probably still is. Four kids and a utilitarian marriage—
functional, its passion drained years back
by an exhausting commitment to full immersion in
a religious lifestyle.
I recalled how, this time of year, the church service,
volunteer obligations, family management, and
holiday expectations always left her brittle.
Fifteen years ago, to distract herself, she began
joining multilevel marketing companies that
promised honest products, sales opportunity, wealth,
and vacations in the islands.…
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Help! The teachers are killing each other
With number 2 pencils and wooden rulers
and sharp-edged papers and expectations
and heavy folders filled with data.
Ms. Rowles is dead on the floor,
The principal’s master key jabbed
Into her cross-sectioned left ventricle.
Her last words were
“Don’t forget to study for the test.”
Mr. Carpenter is heaped over
And still twitching on his keyboard.
His blank eyes, fixed on his wall that house
a century’s worth of senior pictures,
Are filled with purple blood
and drenched in clean tears.…
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Three nights running I’ve seen
November’s Frost (or Beaver) Moon
pause at my window in passing.
Gravity brings it on a lariat
past earthbound me, amid the rodeo
of spheres in the night watch.
I pretend love is involved:
Mother Earth like every wise parent
allows impetus while holding on.
The girl asked, one wild March:
“If the string breaks, Dad, the kite—
won’t it fly away from us?”
From my understanding
of aerodynamics I explained it thus:
how her kite stays airborne
by resistance to the string,
trying to get free of earth and join
prevailing winds by adoption.
After saying it, I noticed ten
fingers tighten on quivering twine;
her own orbit, round my life.
– Russell Rowland…
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My balcony hangs in the air on the eighth floor, with a view of Chicago’s skyline. I grasp the flowery porcelain mug in my hands, taking a sip of coffee, and admire the plants and flowers surrounding me. One might say I have a green thumb, but I think the secret is that I love gardening, not for the sake of the work itself, but for the life it creates. I encourage what I plant to grow, and I thank them and give them compliments for their beauty, for the zeal. I talk to them as if they can hear me, but even if it’s not the words they understand, they must sense the vibrations of care, so they flourish.
***
A flower can have many names.…
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