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Siblings
In The War-Torn Heart Of The House
Bucky, it’s Tuesday, May 9. I’m in the records vault using the old IBM to hammer this one out to you, my dictaphone account of how it went the last night at our house and about my return to Trent (still minimum security).
September 1990Darrell
I liked my truck. I liked to put all my blocks in the back and cart them from room to room. But I loved Merry’s doll.
September 1990Dancing
Miss Valentine’s School of Social Dance, jitterbugging in Calcutta, the “big girl’s ward” in the crippled children’s hospital
November 1989Caleb’s Journal
I live alone. Other men might be lonely. But who can notice what might be absent when other things are present?
August 1989Leaving The Dead
My mother wanted to flush our pet goldfish down the toilet. My brother and I thought we at least ought to look after its death since we hadn’t done much for its short life.
June 1989The Baby Machine
The next day was Sunday, and after church Peggy was born time after time. “Being born” meant sliding down the trough into the pillow. Magda knew that babies were born with diapers on, so that was how Peggy was dressed.
March 1989Kudzu Dreams
I was a child with a peculiar and passionate hunger for the peppermint in toothpicks when I went on a lion hunt with Opal Lavender, who was my favorite person and one of my own people.
September 1988The Priest Of Halfway
Enos had died that year, pathetically, and Jethro had seen in his eyes before they closed only relief that he no longer had to keep a parallel set of double-entry books for that God. That God was busy all the time, balancing numbers. Jethro had no desire for His heaven, and no fear of His hell.
August 1988I Have No Brother
The only furniture / in that tiny room / where my brother lives / is a mirror / on a plain white / wall. When I enter / that room / there is only myself. // I am searching for / my brother. I have no brother.
June 1988A Little Irish Water Music
Occasionally, when Dad belted up his trousers with twine, she turned as brittle as snapbread, but in those early years, she was usually willing to dismiss our days as the pruning from which decorous bloom must one day erupt.
March 1988
