Sybil Smith | The Sun Magazine #2

Sybil Smith

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Sybil Smith lives in Vermont on the Connecticut River. She no longer feels the need to dazzle the world with her eloquence, and her greatest joy comes from taking care of a baby. She has been sober for more than eight years.

— From July 2017
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Bible Hockey

Jail seems like a metaphor for the human condition: we all have life without the possibility of parole. And, as in life, some people serve their sentences in nicer places than others. Foxtrot — or “the hole,” as the inmates call it — is the worst place to be. It is like the underworld, a frightening and remote region where everything is cement or metal.

July 2003
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Do You Know Calvin Jones?

I had seen Calvin beaten, scorned, humiliated by our father. I had been spared; Katie had been spared; Tema had been spared — all because of Calvin. He was the better target, the only son, born with one testicle, his head misshapen by the doctor’s forceps. He’d been our shield. In our daily reconnaissance, he was point.

December 2002
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Jean Jones

And Jean was off and rolling. It had taken less than fifty words, spoken with a modicum of interest, to snag her. Like some massive, ornamental carp, she nosed up out of the dark bottom, toward the light.

January 2002
Fiction

Jonsared

He doesn’t seem crazy. Not at all. There’s no muttering, no matted hair, no tics, no eyes that are keyholes into rooms where the worst things happen.

December 2000
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

On The Suffering Of Little Things

Everyday tasks become difficult when one constantly worries about the suffering of little things. There are times when I can’t mow the lawn because there are too many grasshoppers dancing about.

June 2000
Fiction

A Dog Named Hopi

I tried to tell myself that he only wanted to rape me. I thought of all the women down through the ages who had been raped and silently asked for their help. I asked their spirits to hover over us and lighten the dark corners of this man’s mind.

August 1999
Fiction

Fritz’s Heart

They want to make all pain go away, but that is impossible. Pain is like the sand in an hourglass: a certain amount must sift through your soul before your life is over.

March 1999
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

A Day In The Life Of Ann

Ann is lying on her left side in the hospital bed in the living room. Joe has just gone to work. Before leaving, he helped me turn her and take off her impractical frilly nightgown. He wants her dressed normally, though she’s way beyond caring. Now I’m watching TV, waiting for the suppository I gave her to work.

February 1999
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

Turning

Pulling down my pants was not enough. I had to let them fall below my knees and then carefully, so as not to lose my balance, turn as if on a vertical spit, heated by Tommy’s eyes.

December 1997
Essays, Memoirs, & True Stories

For Lulu, With Love

She is pushed in through the door of the rural Mississippi clinic where I work. Behind her is movement, the rise and fall of slurred voices. Then a cluster of people crowd in behind her. But Lulu stands where she was pushed. She looks at me. I look at her, but not for long.

October 1997
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