All of It
The Start of It A friend of D’s wife G says there’s been a bad accident. “That’s all I know,” she says, “except that it happened on Rte. 15 and Laurel Road.” She lowers her voice as if she doesn’t want to be overheard. “D is in surgery right now as I’m telling you this....
Bridget Horan Rises from the Dead and Speaks Words Into My Ear
Práta means potato, child. Prátaí póir are seed-potatoes best planted on Good Friday. Iomaire is a potato bed and taobhfhód its own particular sod. Bachlóga are potato sprouts; millíní are the buds. Báinseog phrátaí is a patch of potatoes in bloom, lovelier than you might think. Caldar is a big potato. Práta préacháin is a potato...
Fallingwater
Listen: On this night, the house is an organ, an orchestra, a bellowing storm. The stream roars under a bridge and balconies, channeling into rapids, leaping and crashing onto boulders below. Nothing is silent this night—forested as dusk without sun, cloaked by rain that thunders as if to announce water is coming to find the path of...
start with a murder
of crows, they who first saw me at the retreat: week in ohio, more than a little death at my heels. five or six of them, the crows, perched and rattling a dead-top tree, cackled me down a good morning (returned). a good morning (returned) is what I am seeking; that elusive memory of sunup...
Let There Be More Spices
1 In the beginning there was only absence. Of flavor. 2 The table of my youth was a darkness of bland, the burden of my mother’s type I diabetes baked into every surface. So as I stared at the jar of lard my new mother-in-law kept on the stove I felt myself hovering over the...
An Abecedarian Nocturne for the NICU Moms
An angel got its wings today, the caption reads beneath a photo of a mother’s baby the size of a hand posted to the Facebook NICU parents page. Night nurse clicks around vital sign jumbo screens. The whir of my breast pump punctuates each beat as I doom scroll through pictures and pleas –...
Astonish
Astonish (v.) In 1300, there was a word, astonien, which meant “to stun” or “strike senseless,” which came from the Old French estoner—to stun, daze, deafen, or astound. This came from Latin’s ex- meaning “out” + tonare: to thunder. (See thunder). See thunder, hear lightning, ride air, the wind is your breath, you lift the...
Meditation on a Morning Commute
I must tell you that in the thick of autumn on a sixty-mile stretch of Michigan highway between my cold apartment and my dark office I’ve lost count of the number of mangled deer carcasses staining the concrete shoulder, whiplashed, eyes vacant, thin necks assuredly bent at some horrendous angle, clumps of bones and fur...
Xibalbá :: Ritual
_____ _____, (birthdate). I slide my left arm out of the pink hospital wrap before the technician says Good. Twenty-five days of _____ _____, (birthdate) & the response, Good, that’s you. Each step of cancer treatment becomes its own type of ritual. With chemo: Say your name & birthdate, Heparin to clean the port, water...
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,...
I Should Have Left Him Then
You are at a frat party in Michigan—your first and only. Your cousin invited you to see the snow sculptures the houses erect every winter, mythical beasts glistening under clear February sky. His frat is one of those academic, no-secrets-no-hazing ones, and you watch them sing (silly song title) as they gather behind the basement...
what you love about new york
city, which you never appreciated when you lived here, is how the city requires you to develop muscle memory: your elbows know to circle around the lady who is taking too long to reach the corner, and your big toes stop a second before the jogger dashes in front of you, and so you never...
Consider the Platypus: Four Forms—Maybe—of the Lyric Essay
What is a lyric essay? Lyric comes from the late sixteenth century: from French lyrique or Latin lyricus, from Greek lurikos, from lura ‘lyre.’ To the ear, “lyre” and “liar” sound the same, which I resist because I do not condone lying in essays, lyric or otherwise. But mythology tells us that the origins of...
The Crab Story
Nancy would tell me to write about the crab; the crab’s funny, it’s human, it’s real, not like the oxygen or the catheter or the morphine; the ugly accoutrements to death are too predictable, she’d say, no one wants to see that mess; maybe the crab story is the direction to take, the one...
Body Puzzle
Across 1. The color I dye my hair. The color of nitrile rubber gloves. Three bowls of thick dye, painted onto my scalp until it burns. My hair grows and pools around my shoulders, over my breasts. This is how I own the ocean. 3. The outline of an area or figure. It is hard...
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