Snail Picking
I was, at age nine, a god of snails. On the quiet San Francisco cul-de-sac where my family lived, Helix aspersa, the brown garden snail, was by far the most plentiful and least evasive wildlife around. Snails plied the long green fins of our neighbor’s agapanthus like barges transiting green canals. I’d unglue them from their...
Scenes from a Weekend Poetry Conference
Friday Evening, Dressing for Art Never before so much hair in one space, so much hair so carefully out of place, and to arrange a ripped T-shirt to slide over one bare shoulder is an art in itself, as is the negative capability of shawls that fall just far enough. Here are jeans slashed to...
Some Things About That Day
The placards I walked through. The wet raincoat on a hook. The questionnaire on a clipboard placed before me. Couples sat around me in the waiting room. They were young. What am I saying? I was only thirty-two. But I remember, the men seemed the more bereft. Facing forward, their elbows resting on knees, their...
On the Farm
Who Oh my god, who is she? I want her for my own. I want her affinity with all those chickens, her lopsided leaning, her house all atilt. I want that tipping chimney and the angle of her neck as she lets one hen push its way into her heart, another pose as a hat....
I Am
Until I was well into my thirties, I didn’t realize this simple fact: Elhajj is an Arabic word that means pilgrim. I blame Dad. He rarely said anything about our name; never talked about his father, or what it means to be an Arab. In Islam, a pilgrimage is the sacred duty of every Muslim....
House in the Suburbs
Those coffee machines still exist—I saw one at an Interstate wayside in Iowa–the ones where the paper cup drops and dark brew follows, then liquid white, then clear to taste. I want to say marriage is like that machine. Like that hot water transfigured to coffee, pouring from on high. Or marriage is like the...
Running Through the Dark
This morning while I was running, shoes smacking the pavement, Venus bright above the spine of the Bear Mountains, and my thoughts pinned to the day ahead, the meetings, the deadlines, the writing I would not do, a deer was hit by a car. It flew in front of me, disrupting the morning stillness, veered...
To All Those Who Say Write What You Know
I will just say this. I know a river or two, the easy ones—the Thames, the Danube and Seine—quick to give their beauty to everyone who nears their banks. I know others who keep more to themselves—the Hudson and Snake, the Elwha—content to take and carry your secrets with their own, they leave you for...
Quinto Sol
“All grants of land made by the Mexican government…shall be respected as valid…” —ARTICLE X, Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed by representatives of Mexican and U.S. governments in February 1848; stricken from treaty ratified by US Congress in May 1848 “Our people were kings,” your father would whisper after handing over the day’s corn and...
Dyad
The couple’s corners are worn and gray, like those of a favorite trinket carried around in a pocket for too long. They sit straight as royalty, gazing through the glass at a point somewhere over our heads, and are holding hands—or would be, if they had hands. Her right arm, broken off at the wrist,...
There’s Things
“We was out shootin’ rabbits and Raymond was there just a bitty ahead of me. We both saw that dang bunny at the same time. Onlys when he pulled his trigger he stood up. And when I pulls my trigger, there’s Ray’s head, affront of me.” His brothers carried him to the closest neighbors. Twenty-one-years-old...
The Other Nana: A Memoir
I.In her kitchen, two blind Siamese cats jump from one formica counter to another. Every item in the house is kept in exactly the same place, for the cats. The Other Nana turns a key, peels a ham out of a tin, a pink body. “I like ham for Christmas,” she says. I’m used to...
![](https://brevitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/FFU-013-MFA-Digital-Brevity-200x165-181009-Enders-1B.jpeg")