The Shape of Emptiness
His mother dies three weeks before the end of the quarter. A boy, a good student: he emails me to tell me the news, asks permission to be absent. Of course, I say, take as much time as you need. I tell him he can withdraw, take an incomplete, but he promises to be back...
Boiled Sugar
Santa Ana, Costa Rica, smells of boiled sugar. Mangoes drop like heavy bells and rot along the streets. The city is fermenting. Brahman cows collect on one corner, eating dirt. Their ribs ripple beneath their skin. I buy coffee and chocolate and cheap earrings at the corner store to take home, tin bells clanging as...
A Review of Patrice Vecchione’s Step into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life
Patrice Vecchione has experience prompting writers, whether university students, community members, or elementary school students. Over the years, though, she has noticed a shifting relationship among them to the imagination. Individuals who used to respond to going outside to look at the clouds with descriptions of “elephants parading, a dragon biting its own tail, a...
If We Had Been Allowed to Take Pictures
If we had been allowed to take pictures inside the Cathedral of the Holy Ascension, this is the picture I would have taken: A woman cleans the wax from the base of the candelabras. She wears a brown and orange dress, simple, made of sturdy material, like a pillow case or a craft project, and...
Diagnosable
It comes at me through the back of the head, down by where my neck splits off, comes slicing through the skin and bone and ligaments and mixing up all the different colors of matter in my brain so it’s finally all grey stuff that hits the inside part of my face like John Henry’s...
The Palm Reader and the Poet
This happened a couple decades ago, and here is how I remember it: I meet a girl, a young woman, maybe eighteen, at a poetry reading. She says she can read my palm. My lifeline is broken—she noticed as she sat behind me and I rubbed my hand through my hair—so maybe she’d better see,...
Genesis
I am sitting in the sanctuary, a few rows from the front, to my left my mom and dad, my little brother Timmy in Mom’s lap and sleeping, to my right my older brother Brad. Brad and I have just received these thin blue books, every kid in the service passed a brand new copy by...
The Nowhere Place
There is a stretch of Highway 63, about 200 yards long, that runs from the massive, wooden cut-out of Minnesota that says Thank You for Visiting the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes to a white index card of a sign that bears a timid Welcome to Iowa and the Iowa slogan printed in standard army-paint green. My older son...
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....
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