Melting
I am passing the library when I see them. Fourteen men walking down a side street, all dressed alike, all stepping to the same steady rhythm. They wear black brimmed hats with black ribbons; the kind all men used to wear before Jack Kennedy made the bare head appealing. They wear black suits and white...
When Aretha Sings …
“It just ain’t no way, baby . . . for me to love you . . . if you won’t let me.” She still sends hot chills up my spine, and I am fourteen again, and it’s Saturday morning, and I’m cleaning our house so I can party that night, and Aretha’s on the hi-fi...
Hive
Above the din of chatter and ringing telephones, I try to lift my own false enthusiasm. Ten minutes from the electronic time-punch when my shift ends and another’s begins in this same space. My light blinks red; I clear my throat and pick up the phone. “Gulliver customer service, this is Trish,” I crisp, looking...
Growth
What you have heard is true. I had a growth on my chin. To be exact, I had a single, as in solitary, hair growing out of my chin. I had the most robust stab of hair on the right side of my chin, more a thorn upon which someone might impale themselves than a...
In My Aunt’s Apartment
There was a place in my aunt’s apartment, high on a shelf, in the kitchen, above the dishwasher, in a large glass jar with a white screw-on lid, where she kept the dog biscuits. Whenever my sister and I came to visit, my aunt would take the jar down from its shelf and give us...
When Ellie Ironed
When Ellie ironed it was Tuesdays. Mondays she hung linens perfumed by Clorox on the line to dry. Before she left for home in the evening, she’d spread them across the kitchen table, and sprinkle them to just-damp with water, and wad them up in the plastic sheeting removed from the dry cleaning: bagged mounds...
Inheritance
A bird flying then landing again and again in the tall grass. A lilac bush split by the wind. The river divides the town–men fish there–some have drowned. The old house on Third Street is empty of Bibles, steaming pots, voices, and looks as if it could crumble. Land not yet valuable, it takes its place...
Using the Fate of Insects as Lineage
My father said honey ran down the wall in his boyhood home. It came around the metal plate covering the kitchen hole where the winter’s bellied stove attached to the chimney. He told me how when the air was cool and instinct inactive, he and my grandfather hunted with sure sticks and burlap bags. From their...
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