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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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Mariachi in the City
A Mariachi walked in the city in the middle of the day. He had a gold trumpet at his side. His Mariachi suit and sombrero were black [...]
Sunday dinner in Columbia, Tennessee: fried chicken, mixed greens— turnips, mustard, and spinach, pan-fried corn, twice milked then stirred with flour and [...]
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After the Orgy
After the Sunday orgy, the men changed their shirts. The women changed their shoes.
Man #1 swaggered all week.
Woman #2 composed a [...]
The dolls were drinking Jack Daniels and having an argument. The mother doll said she was through with the father doll and had rented a room in another [...]
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Our Struggle: On the Experience of Reading Karl Ove Knaussgaard
I read Book One of Karl Ove Knausgaard epic novel My Struggle in 2014, and was instantly [...]
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The day after my thirteenth birthday chunks of ice bounced off the roofs, off the cars, off the sidewalk and I watched, overjoyed with the world. When I ran [...]
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The hospital lobby was all cool air and I was sweating. Orderlies nipped by with bodies on gurneys, nurses behind, sneakers squeaking. Everyone but me knew [...]
PLENTY
All night the shops on the 16th Street Promenade fill with neophyte promenaders. The dogs curl up on the green sleeping bags of their owners, and I [...]
When we first got married, someone gave us a plastic pink flamingo as a joke. We planted it in the front yard next to the barberry bushes. For a while, every [...]