Genesis
I am sitting in the sanctuary, a few rows from the front, to my left my mom and dad, my little brother Timmy in Mom’s lap and sleeping, to my right my older brother Brad. Brad and I have just received these thin blue books, every kid in the service passed a brand new copy by...
Alive
There is a serial killer at work in Baton Rouge, and so, as I drive into the city on this rainy mid-August afternoon to visit family, I move from simply alert to hyper alert. In addition to the three murdered women, there have been four attempted abductions in the past two weeks; the last woman...
The Wheelbarrow Dance on the Harbor of Cascais
The weather had been announcing itself all day, first as a mist tossed high off the distant hills of Sintra, then as a quick bleating pulse through the angled streets of Cascais. By evening we were wishing for the sweaters we hadn’t thought to bring to Portugal at the summer’s height. We were remembering the...
The Paranoid Nurse
I’d spent the afternoon polishing the hull of my sailboat, which sat on a trailer in my front yard in Phoenix. Now it was night. I was standing next to it in the moonlight, admiring its pearly sheen. A compact car pulled up to the bungalow across the street. A woman wearing a white nurse’s...
Bridge Bum Buddha
My first lover (although I use the word loosely) was an older man, twice my age of 15, a lapsed law student with violet eyes and kohl-black lashes, and a bridge bum, not the kind who sleeps on railroad embankments, but one of the obsessed who sits at a table all day and night, holding...
Portrait of the Artist’s Great Grandmother as a Young Uncompahgre
She’s in a ceremonial lodge, constructed of underbrush, blankets and jackrabbit skins. To this day it remains ambiguous whether this is a studio mock-up or an actual location shot. Through the exit flap are visible the vast orange sandstone formations of the great southwestern desert—but, even seen through the corneal lens, these look unreal. One...
My Contribution
I wasn’t there when it started. I wasn’t there in the beginning. I was invited to join later on. Enroll, enlist. I wasn’t usually included in these sorts of things. It seemed like everyone was asked to join. I was invited too. A boy in my class had started it, one of my fellow second...
Leonids
November 18, 2001. The Leonid meteor shower. I wake up at 3 a.m., throw a wool coat over my flannel pajamas, put my fringed suede gloves on, and pull some blankets out of the linen closet. I’m quiet about it. I don’t want to disturb my husband. I go outside and drag a wooden Adirondack...
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