Raiment
When my father stopped eating and we all understood it was a matter of time, I drove from Vermont to Boston to see him at the nursing home. He’d suffered a steady decline and lost the ability to care for himself, but his memory and cognitive abilities did not have the savage gaps of Alzheimer’s....
A Stranded Moose
A moose had stranded herself shoulder-deep in the bog last fall, at the southerly end of Long Pond. Of course, a car in the mud is one thing, a foundered moose another. One is a matter of inconvenience, the other of life or death. The animal was helpless, paralyzed. Fish and Game officers came out...
I Know My Body Tried to Save Me
Dirty, Poz, Faggot, G.R.I.D: pseudonyms for the boy I don’t want to be. Gay-related. Gay-related. I don’t want to be gay-related. I don’t want to be human-immunodeficient either. I don’t want to be in this I.D. clinic reading Tiny Beautiful Things, a book of collected advice columns, a bible that replaced my bible, turning random...
Hungry Because This World Is So Very Full
Across from the mountains, across from the fishing boat paused in the waves, waves like aluminum foil, across from the snowcaps too high to melt, and across from the peaks singing Climb us, climb us! Grab a grappling hook, across from the boat and the sushi it harvests: salmon rolls and dynamite rolls and dragons,...
Imperfection & Other Promises
My dad woke up pale and shaky on the hospital bed and asked me whether the dreams are even his anymore or if he’s just watching them. All I can do is gesture an answer; it’s still a week before they’ll know what’s wrong. His is the viscous pragmatism of a mind on diagnostics: medicated...
The Fair Kids
That’s what the teachers called them when they arrived at school every year in early October. Even though they looked worn-out in their faded, frayed clothes, I imagined their lives as worldly, exotic, roving from place to place, delivering three days of carnival razzle-dazzle to small towns like mine. I envied them because they never...
Night With Blue Eyes
For the last thirty-nine years, I have slept with another man. He has pale blue eyes like my husband. I don’t remember an introduction, though there must have been one to dull the danger so I wouldn’t feel those eyes on me. He is a predator. He is The Norwegian. It is 1979, and I...
Jijivisha
His physiotherapy was supposed to have started immediately, but it has been a stop-and-go process. More of a hard stop really because when your father says he is too tired to walk, the physiotherapists take him at his word and go on to the next patient. By the end of his first week in the...
Grief-Keeping
The first prayer I remember was shma ysrael Adonai elohaynu… trailing off into quiet murmurings of twitching lips, children’s hands covering their eyes as they recited the rest of the prayer. Too holy of a moment, in case God decided to appear. You cover your eyes to concentrate, the rabbi reminds us. Australian raptors carry...
Taiwan 1969
My mother is an octopus. She collects our comic books, straightens collars, and slings bags across her narrow chest. She prods my brothers and me down the airplane aisle with her hard beak. Out in the squid inky Taipei night waits a grandfather we will meet for the first time. We must call him Waigong....
In The Neuro Unit
Old men lie pale and shrunken, their blood pressure cuffs wheezing, their heart monitors beeping, their oxygen levels flashing bright green numbers on small computer screens as their brains sigh and shudder with dreams of summer slumber, of supple thighs and willing bodies, of late-night assignations and the creaking back seats of cars. They inhale,...
Epistolary Weaved with Birds and Grass After Long Hospital Stay
Dear L, The morning paper opens to a story about a body found in the bay. Snow in moonlight in May, blue as a hospital gown. I take care of a man who seems to forget what he is going to say almost as soon as he is going to say it. What if this...
About the House
first narrow bars of light through the slits in the blinds… a thatch of hair in the brush, fingernail parings by the edge of the sink… percussive splatter of coffee grounds against the plastic liner… slow rising sound as water from the tap fills the bottle… dervish of steam from the humidifier whirling...
Living Seams
1. My partner likes to record himself talking in his sleep. I’ve listened to him order eggs, grow giddy over mushrooms, worry about spinach yields. In the morning, he’ll play back the recording and his eggs, mushrooms, spinach will be punctuated by my own sounds: whimpers, cries; last night a scream to Get off me!,...
It’s About the Size of a Clenched Fist
You probably don’t remember, but you were with me for my final hangover. You were just three and needed a flu shot. The revelry from the night before hung onto me, smothered me, made each movement a chore as we made our way to the doctor’s office. But I want you to know that although...
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