The Sudanese Lady and Elvis
Tiny, middle-aged, with black western-styled hair, wearing matching skirt and top from Paris, the Arabic Sudanese woman stared at me. We were at a dinner party in Maadi, an exclusive suburb of Cairo. Employing an Oxford English–plotted, selective, erudite if slow in passing through her lips–she made fun of me. Not of me, of course....
Sterility
Wednesday, 2:00 a.m. In the artless sterility of an unsterile motel room, water gurgles and drains through the pipes overhead; sirens and traffic sounds leak in around the dead-bolted door’s frame. A woman’s sweater and a man’s shirt hang on a rod near the cracked sink. From above the wavy mirror, a garish fluorescent light...
Slowly
I’ve been reading Beverly Cleary’s Ramona books with my six-year old son Will, who loves Ramona because she’s a kindred spirit: bright, creative and frequently misunderstood. While I’m reading, Will often interrupts to ask me questions. Surprisingly, he rarely asks me to explain the action or to gloss words like “Bendix” or “permanent wave” or...
Talking After Love
It is fall and I’m talking long distance to my boyfriend in Milwaukee, we just finished talking sex talk, talk not virtuous but virtual because he’s so far away and you know how you feel just after making love, when all of your breathing feels gracious, it makes a man sleep, a woman talk, seeming...
Taking Refuge
So empty of what? Learning to put on a monks robe in the heat of northern Thailand. Being the butt of all the jokes, and at least a foot taller than all the other young novices. Eating fire, sitting till my knees broke. Waking at dawn. Wanting it so bad. I thought this was cool....
The Embarrassment
In German class they asked her to describe her most embarrassing moment, so she would learn verbs like “to blush” and “to cringe.” She was only fifteen, and the most embarrassing thing that would ever happen to her had yet to happen. Still, she had a story to tell. Quite recently, she told them in...
Slide
The wrinkles on her elbow are like the circles in a tree stump, telling her age to anyone who knows the formula. I watched her from two seats behind on the bus. Her nostrils were big. I wanted to climb into one of them and get sucked up into her brain with a hard tugging...
Wild Rose
Listen, she says, I’m seventy years old, my husband’s gone, he left me peanuts and my kids aren’t getting a nickel. I’m at Gold Strike Casino, a half-mile north of Hoover Dam. Her face is hard and blank as the dam. We’re playing quarters. I’m on Wild Cherry. She’s on Double Diamond. This goddamn machine,...
![](https://brevitymag.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/FFU-013-MFA-Digital-Brevity-200x165-181009-Enders-1B.jpeg")