“Why don’t you bring your friends over? You’re always locked up in that room,” her hands gesture while her foot is on the pedal. She insists on concentrating her gaze onto me as she “talks,” but we all know that you’re supposed to keep your eyes on the road and your hands on the wheel. This, of course, does not apply to her. We start swerving into the other lane, as I … [Read more...]
Seizure
It is late in April, one of those cool and wet mornings when the sun’s light is hazy and blue. I wake early, escape out the front door of my suburban townhome with a cup of coffee, tell my husband I’ll be back before the kids wake, and take off down the street in the family van, sip coffee, roll down my window, smell the lingering wetness of the grass. Under the low clouds in … [Read more...]
Are Hungry Ghosts Just Ghosts with Borderline Personality Disorder?
“You need to stop waiting for everything to click,” the psychic said, pulling her clasped fingers apart and then placing them together again, in a sort of locking motion. “There is no magic moment. Is this making sense?” It was making sense. She was saying the same thing I’ve been told for years; there is no such thing as irrefutable evidence that things are falling into … [Read more...]
Desert Alignment
Nothing is born, nothing dies. Nothing to hold on to, nothing to release. Samsara is nirvana. There is nothing to attain. When we realize that afflictions are no other than enlightenment, We can ride the waves of birth and death in peace, Traveling in the boat of compassion on the ocean of delusion, Smiling the smile of nonfear. -- Thich Nhat Hanh You can tell … [Read more...]
Milkman by Anna Burns: a soundtrack to street harassment
Milkman Since my car fell apart in November 2018 I’ve been commuting 12 miles to work without one, via crumbling New Jersey, USA public transportation infrastructure. The roughest parts of my commute happen on foot. I’ve picked up poison ivy trekking the side of a highway without sidewalks. The buses run infrequently and follow their schedule only erratically, so I am often … [Read more...]
Are Made Of
You remember each new encounter, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the salivating. How your mouth shaped around every new one in an attempt to make itself one with it, tongue exploring crevices and ridges, curves and surfaces. The tints and tones, surprising tastes; how fundamentally they are all the same, yet each so unique. Suck, lick, nibble, bite, swallow. It’s hard to … [Read more...]
Body Bereft of Fitton Farm
1. Under a gray sky, the sun came around a corner like a drunk with a knife, a slice of light on the ruins of our childhood: the houses, sheds, barns, and junkyards that were once our farm on County Road 1800 East, Rantoul Illinois 61866. I say it in my mind with the singsong memorization of my four-year old self. My brother Jacob took control of the situation, asking the … [Read more...]
Icarus Regrets Every Tired Muscle
At the base of my spine glows an orange orb, free-floating amidst the Harrington rods and titanium cage. My low spine fused, my narrative nerves pinched and running the length of this mortal cord from sacral to skull. In between The Greenman, Jesus, Carl Jung dive in and out of the pool meeting their reflection as they sink, first fingers, then wrists, arms, shoulders into the … [Read more...]
Something About Rage and the Light Dying
I hadn’t killed us yet. My dad fidgeted next to me, exhaling loudly every few moments. Always a sensitive kid, I guess I was something of a Doppler radar of other’s emotions and my father’s nerves were transmitting microwave signals to my own. DNA to DNA---pinging from him to the truck’s ceiling to me---a continuous triangle of tension. It had been that way for most of my … [Read more...]
Conversations at Thresholds: a Contemplative Offering
I went for a walk this morning, as I do most days, before the sky held enough light to see in color. Morning joy is one of the most reliable sorts for me. Part of the appeal is living the visible, audible, gustable, tangible changes rung by the dawn. In the quieter winter months, with light coming late according to our shifted clocks, I tend to walk slowly, and luxuriate in … [Read more...]
Love Song for a River Bank
The great wall of ancient growth slides its shadow across the river. Alder-cedar-redwood are the color of the afternoon water: serpentine. A breeze sweeps up from the sea. It picks out the leaves of the tanoaks one by one in gold; it turns up the volume on the rapids just downstream. Wild azaleas bloom from the tangled bank, but the wind is wrong for me to catch their … [Read more...]
The Mill Stones of History
My wife always thought that someday I’d be a big success. She talked about it since we got married, enthusiastically in the beginning, particularly when she became pregnant with our first daughter, less and less later, after she got pregnant again and we decided to keep the baby. I taught Russian literature and linguistics at the local college and held seminars every other … [Read more...]
Aztec Summer
And after I got laid off from my teaching job in Michigan, I moved out to Portland and lived on unemployment and savings for almost two years, running my credit union accounts almost down to zero searching for another gig. When that didn't happen, I decided to try working a summer seasonal job again, fighting wildfires with the Forest Service like I'd done when younger. But … [Read more...]
The Muse Cuts: On Mental Health and Writing
My university lies at the center of a small farming town. It is a splotch of academia in the midst of many hay fields, and this year it has eleven thousand students. I’m here to learn creative writing, or really to hang out with creative writers. My school talks about taking care of yourself. We have a Wellness Center where anyone can wander in and get 25 free condoms (and, if … [Read more...]
Notes on the Sacred Art of Dog Walking
I read and reviewed Jim Harrison’s final collection of poetry, Dead Man’s Float, for the Missoula Independent in January of 2016. One of the first poems to strike me deeply is called “Notes on the Sacred Art of Log Sitting.” The poem, which is more prose than verse, begins with the poet talking about his recovery from back surgery, and how the chief neurologist tells him, “You … [Read more...]
Faleeha Hassan: My Life as a Refugee
Once my name appeared on a death list published in a number of newspapers and on some websites, I decided to flee Iraq and went first to the Turkish city of Eskişehir—on the advice of an Iraqi friend who lived there. I only lived there a month, however, because I had a hard time adjusting to that city, especially to the high cost of living. So I moved to Afyonkarahisar, … [Read more...]
Eight Hours
A man, who was leaving, asked me to write a story. He said he was going on an errand – a meeting with his accountant, a lunch with his cable guy, a high tea with a small herd of white rhinos – I wasn’t sure which. It was tax season. He promised to be back in eight hours, or so, an equivalent of a short story, he said, give or take. Smart man: no one should be writing novels in … [Read more...]
Animals, Seven Days Old
I. I start at the cheek, the slope slowing into the area where eyes rest. The dip of the chin, gray’s muted hue, smog on jaw. The ear, hair sheltering it. Eyebrows, eyes and the gleam trapped beneath. My mother taught me that noses are simple. At the lips, there is a cupid’s bow and plumpness to thumb. Shading spaces. … [Read more...]
Edward Albee Speaks
I heard that Edward Albee was giving a workshop at the Omega Institute. I attempted to sneak in using my press credentials, but Omega politely explained that "all the slots are filled." So I resolved to meet Albee at his book-signing following the workshop, at the Omega bookstore. As I walked up, an older man and two younger men climbed the steps of the bookshop. I … [Read more...]
The Seed
The sun beat down on my parents’ black Olds as they drove south to their honeymoon in Florida. It was 1937. My father could easily have afforded a new car which cost $540 then. He made plenty of money in the grocery store he owned in Jackson Heights in those days. “Even in bad times people, they got to eat,” he said in his thick Yiddish accent that sounded singsong. Besides, he … [Read more...]
Being There – Michelle Bracken
Summer, 2004 We had never gone away together, never taken a vacation. My mother had always been too busy cleaning houses, changing diapers, and dating worthless men. But she made time, one summer, for us to go somewhere, be somewhere and escape our day to day drudgery among cacti and overwhelming heat. It would be my mother, my five-year-old sister, and me. We were leaving … [Read more...]
Subterranean Boy
There was a time that I fell in love once: with life, slowly with myself, and with a beautiful boy who completely turned my world upside down. A beauteous man child who taught me about life and love and artistic vision as salvation, a stunning combination of Jim Morrison, Harrison Ford, and River Phoenix combined, whose good looks and quiet demeanour had me transfixed at every … [Read more...]
All Night You Dream of Ice and In the Morning Wake to a Skiff of Snow
After all these weeks of rain and gray, the sky a fitted sheet on the too bulky mattress of mass, last night there were white blossoms in the trees and snow on the earth and your hair grew long and light-filled and you rode through town on a polar bear. Who knows what dreams mean when the body is this white waxing flesh or white waning flesh, pale or bright and orbiting … [Read more...]
The Only Man in the World
DADIO SPLIT FOR MOLOKA’I every weekend to supervise his Puko’o project. He was certain his pick-and-shovel laborers and heavy equipment operators were slacking off. I took turns with Troy, my big brother, serving as his assistant. We carried luggage, accompanied him on his lagoon inspections, and served as whipping boys should he need to vent. I hated going. I always thought he … [Read more...]
Under His Roof
At 19, just out from under my father’s roof, I was in an antique shop, a secondhand shop really, eyeing a copper teakettle. “Sit!” the owner said sharply. I sat. Then I saw a large dog, a Standard Poodle, behind me. The owner had been talking to his dog. I began to shake. My father was so menacing that when he gave an order if you didn’t follow it, his big fist would … [Read more...]
Marshmallow Forest
Mud hardens on my combat boots as I step behind my sister through the sickle of woods dividing her property from her neighbors. The son of the previous owners, born intellectually disabled and fond of motors, rode a four-wheeler across this pathway several times a day. Since he moved with his parents to Tampa for their retirement, however, the path has atrophied. It has invited … [Read more...]
