The harp sits in the corner gathering dust, ever since Petra’s dog Maisy got spooked by rustling in the cornfield. A possum? A snake? Petra had reached down to calm the marble-eyed wolf-shepard mix she’d coddled from a pup, and lost of a chunk
Mom had already signed me up to be a candy striper by the time she and O’Toole picked me up at Robinson Memorial.
“You need to think about those less fortunate,” she said, as I scratched at the stitches on my wrists. “You need to think of someone other than yourself.”
I knew that what she actually meant was that I needed to think about her. She didn’t know just how much I thought of her, her nightly calls during my depression in which she presented theory after theory regarding what was “wrong” with me. When I wasn’t studying, all I thought about was other people: people I’d let down, people who were sure I could do better, people who wanted me to dress, speak and act differently, my ex who wanted me to drop out of college six months before graduation so we could buy a house for a family we wouldn’t end up having.
The first day of Playwriting 320, I open the door to the classroom and nod hello to fourteen students with expectant faces, weird garb, new tattoos. Earlier today, I considered asking my TA to pass out my syllabi, make introductions, assign homework. I considered not leaving my sister’s hospital room where any day or week now she will surely die. But a professor herself, she insisted that everything flows from a first class. “Go. You need to be there,” she said. “Get the fuck out of my room and give them grief,” then she coughed a laugh I couldn’t echo. When the meds again pulled her under, I made sure the nurse had my cell, then I headed to campus three miles away, the mobile of glass birds for her birthday next week chirping in the back seat. I’m thinking of giving it to her later today.
Ann smelled the elephant before she saw it. Then a mud-grey foot swung past and just ahead, landing to her left. The drover passed, and the tail of the elephant whisked out in front of her, stinking of loose bowels. Ann stopped beside the fruit
Excerpt from The Odyssey and Dr. Novak
There are in our existence spots of time,
Which with distinct preeminence retain
A renovating Virtue …
(Wordsworth The Prelude)
ENGLAND 1946–1953
This is where the odyssey begins, or where I imagine it commences. The time is a warm English summer afternoon in 1946. The place is the front garden of the Unitarian parsonage situated in a modest town barely six miles north of Manchester. Holding my six-year-old hand is Dr. Novak, the head of the Unitarian movement in Czechoslovakia.
Kepler made a decision. He looked up from the sidewalk and stepped directly on a crack. He was twenty-three years old and it was time to grow up. It felt good, a load off, until he got a call from the emergency room saying his mother had stepped on a slug on the back porch, fallen and broken her back. A banana slug, fat and yellow and flattened to the consistency of discarded gum. He wondered if it was poisonous—wasn’t that what bright colors signified in the wild? Danger, toxicity, fangs and stingers? Inside the house his mother was laid out on the couch, her glowing, flowered muumuu signifying something else, though he didn’t know what.
I spent seconds sharing the stage with him in my minor role, hours in the darkened wings watching him perform in the light. He came from Switzerland. He spoke at least three languages. He was a worldly college senior. I remember his curly hair, his long body, his loping stride, but not his name.
Dear Cousin ,
I miss you very much. My life now has purpose, but your absence continues to be so very hard to accept. I know things are just like the song says “you’ve got go to prison for your cousin / you’ve got to / you’ve got to / you’ve got to” but this truth does not delete my beating heart for you.
from a novel in progress
The Harris Suites crumbled slowly on the back strip of Virginia Beach. Alex paused and looked up at the bleached yellow paint of the façade. In each room, save one, the window blinds were drawn. Even in the bright sun of midday he could sense the darkness inside those rooms.
My Anger Tours the State Capitol
There were once a girl and a boy who lay on a hill of gravel kissing until their lips were raw. Kissing was the best thing that had ever happened to the boy and the girl, and so they rode their bicycles to the gravel pit every Sunday in pursuit of that sweet, singular pastime.
The woman on the subway looked like my mother so I sat down next to her and said you look like my mother.
Mary Beth
Strictly speaking, as a licensed practical nurse (LPN), it is not my job to manage the table décor, but I do it because I’m good at it. Each resident gets a rose they are welcome to pass on to their valentine-du-jour. Though that’s kind of a sick joke, when you think about it.
Your boyfriend’s sister is studying psychology. She says anyone in the room who doesn’t yawn when someone else yawns is a sociopath, so you fake your yawns when you notice others yawning. You sneak into the bedroom while she’s over and swallow
I texted my mother the night before that I’d be at the house not too late and not too early. Cut from the dark sky bled a pastel pink that seeped up and over the mountain around 6am, which was better than before we set the clocks back.
There was a space station on the news that summer and some mention of the moons of Jupiter and the asteroid belt.
The Space Between: A Meditation
My brain works in spurts: There are two hemispheres and a space between. The space between is filled with synapses, junctions that jump from nerve impulse to an unknown landing space. The space between is the vulnerable sweet spot of juicy possibility. The space between is a chasm, and beautiful, but how we land is entirely up to us.
No one had time to send greeting cards to William, my father, flowers meant for men, maybe an assortment of succulents in a ceramic dish for his coffee table. In his room, the plastic pitcher of hospital water sits beside an empty Styrofoam cup. A paper-wrapped straw lies abandoned on the swing-around tray to hold orange Jell‑O snack packs, never served.