If
… the six pathologists at Colorado’s Air Force Academy had voted differently on the diagnosis of the biopsy from your cheek–the same cheek you popped with your thumb before shuffling cards for Gin Rummy, if they had voted four melanoma, two sarcoma instead of the other way around, if they had not voted wrong on...
After the Sun Melted
inspired by Aftermath by Elane Johnson After the sun melted on the top hat of the Mad Hatter with Alice, outside the window in Central Park; after your doctor refused to talk to you, when you were behaving crazy, because the tumor had spread to your brain; after the doctor told us there was nothing...
Variations on a Home Depot Paint Sample
Desert Sunrise, 230B-4 To mix Desert Sunrise 230B-4, combine equal parts vodka, orange juice, pineapple juice, and troposphere; add grenadine syrup to taste. Throw in blender with ice cubes and a handful of red dirt. Blend. Next drive westward all night along I-80 until you reach Wyoming, and, when you see in your rearview the...
Things That Appear Ugly Or Troubling But Upon Closer Inspection Are Beautiful
(after Sei Shonagon) A river in winter with ice floes jammed violently against one another; you can see dark water in between the white and gray floes, sparkling in the sunshine. Abandoned barns, their huge roofs sagging like the backs of tired horses. The slick, black body of a baby goat, stillborn, lying in the...
Small Love Letters
“Cleopatra’s nose, had it been shorter, the whole face of the world would have been changed.” —Pascal, Pensées I. The real history of the world happens in small ways because it concerns the history of love, itself a series of small events. A glance might shift the order of everything, move the heart into open...
Lag Time
It doesn’t thunderstorm in California. Not like those from my memory of home. I listen for them at night when the sky half-promises, but it rarely delivers the noise I need. This I know: If you count the time it takes between the flash of a Kansas lightning bolt and the crack before the roll...
The Soils I Have Eaten
The state soil of New York is named for the place where a man lost his finger to a rattlesnake. The finger lays quiet in the ground. The snake’s great-great-grandsnakes still chitter through this soil. Sometimes one snake gets the idea he can blink his eye. He concentrates on this single violet thought. A slick frog crunches...
Death of a Citizen Abroad
When a citizen dies abroad, their body is sent home in the cargo-hold of a commercial jetliner along with suitcases stuffed with beachwear, woodcarvings from the tourist stalls, and souvenir bottle-openers shaped like elephants. A coffin is just another piece of baggage. At the airport, a Consular Affairs Officer, Mr. R—, fills out the customs...
Studies for a Drawing in Red
I. A six year old helps his mother hang a hummingbird feeder in the front yard. “Why is it red?” he asks. “Hummingbirds like red,” his mother says. Hours later she finds him on the front porch, sitting as still as a six year old can. He has put on an old sweatshirt—red—pulled the hood...
Beyond Chagrin
When I was in the second grade I wet my pants. At a rehearsal of my grade school’s pageant, just before I spoke my lines—well, line, but, according to the director, a fourth grade teacher who’d minored in drama, it was a crucial one. For in this version of “Little Red Riding Hood” the BIG...
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