Browse Topics
Sexual Violence
Telling The Truth
Library books, a stage production of Cheaper by the Dozen, bacon-lettuce-and-tomato sandwiches
October 2007
Selected Poems
You said you thought the word was pure / to describe the moonlight above us / on our last night in boarding school, / when you and I broke the rules and slept / outside under a blanket of young summer.
— from “To My Lifelong Friend Going To Prison”
June 2007Small Victories
Delivering a calf, surviving a rape, arm-wrestling like a girl
April 2005
Apologies
Clipping perfect long-stemmed roses, having failed as a teacher, keeping people happy while they piss away all their money playing high-limit baccarat and blackjack
February 2005
Heat
The heat that summer was a living thing that tangled around you, tripping you, slowing you to a crawl. New York City was draped in an impressionist haze. It was 1957. I was thirteen and had my first job, stapling tags onto winter clothes in the warehouse of a department store.
January 2004
Excuses
A leaf floating and swirling in a breeze, the Reading Club, a chipmunk
October 2003
Stalking Gracie
It’s 6:30 in the morning, and Maria is still asleep. I’m awake before the alarm goes off, but I don’t move yet. I just stare into her auburn hair. Her back, with its thick pale scar, is pressed against my chest. I have to be careful when I get up. If I move too quickly, Maria will startle awake and want me to stay, and I can’t miss another day of work. We can’t afford that. I want to get inside her now, but I resist.
February 2003
In The Lions’ Den
Half of each weekly session is devoted to charting one man’s abusive acts on the night of his arrest. We write them out on the blackboard, step by step. . . . Whatever we hear at chartings is only part of the story. Men minimize their actions and inflate hers in an effort to prove that she was responsible. We ferret out the truth and examine inconsistencies until a man’s story finally unravels like a hem with faulty stitching.
October 2000The Story Of Passover
I can’t make it through a Seder without laughing. Across the table, my sister makes faces at me and walks her parsley across her plate. The balls of gefilte fish quiver on the good china, dressed in a suspension that we call “snot” and carefully scrape off with our forks.
May 2000
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today