Begin Begin with a thing. Make it a sparrow. A sparrow clinging to the stem of an Easter Lily. Make the sparrow silent. We don’t want too many voices this early [...]

COWBOY BOOTS Sometimes an urge takes hold of us and pulls us onto the dance floor even though we only want to sip our drink and observe. I don’t mean one of those [...]

On the day we flee town, we will want the neighborhood to know what happened. We will tell stories about our stepfather to the kind and not-so-kind men on our street, to the [...]

The paratroopers fall and as they fallThey mow the lawn. --Wallace Stevens Everyone was talking about a philosophy of life. It seemed important and the kind of thing that [...]

            We all live poorly here. Use mail-in rebates at the hardwood store, get drunk at Sammy’s on Friday [...]

Late but not quite midnight. Marina Melba stands on the communal balcony of the flats. She pulls a cigarette with elegance from a packet. Lights it without looking, eyes [...]

The hotel key was ours. A rectangular piece of hard plastic with the words PLAY SLEEP REPEAT on the front. New York City. That humid summer day when it rained frogs and [...]

We’re together again, three old buds standing in a dark closet at our thirtieth high school reunion. We can hear the eighties music from the auditorium one floor below us. [...]

Her hair sometimes sailed on her. She was a point in the distance, as if the entire universe had poured from a convergence. She thought, It’s just as [...]

Hatchings Parades always made her tired, so it wasn’t surprising that the assassin fell asleep on the roof. As she napped, the roof became quite crowded. A family [...]

My mom just called from the nursing home. She survived another painful heart episode. She asked me how the people liked the Italian songs I sang in church. She has asked me [...]

I couldn’t see my way clear to make it to the annual Gala.  I had RSVPed under self-imposed pressure, but I wasn’t above claiming a sudden illness should anyone mention [...]

I sat on the backstairs, on the top step near the screened kitchen door, waiting. I did a lot of waiting. For Maud Ellen to come talk, or my grandmother, Mamoo, or Daddy [...]

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My mother acts like the conflict between her and me is semantic, rather than due to her crappy parenting. For instance, when I try to talk to her about how when I was a kid [...]