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Family and Relationships
The Pearls
An engagement present from my husband’s parents, / they seemed like something from a yearbook photograph. / I’d have preferred a wrought-iron pendant, costume / beads that caught the sunlight.
June 2015On His Ninety-Fifth Birthday, I Find My Dead Father On The Internet
I can still picture the room where he set up his ham radio. / Homemade furniture. Threadbare rug. A small space heater.
June 2015
The R-Word
When he diagnosed my three-month-old, Fiona, with a chromosomal disorder, the redheaded, cherubic medical geneticist did not use the phrase “mentally retarded” — thank God, or the gods of rhetoric, or just the politically correct medical school the young doctor had attended.
May 2015
Almost Unendurable Beauty
The plastic prescription vial contains thirty doses. I press the cap down, twist it counterclockwise, and shake a cylindrical pill into my hand. It is an ugly gray, like dryer lint, like newly poured concrete, like a bullet. I know my daughter will notice this.
May 2015
Enigma
Each year on April 25 my mother calls to remind me that it’s the anniversary of my father’s death, so I should take a moment to think about him.
May 2015
Good Night
And even after all that, even after everything I’d said to him earlier, he still came to say good night before he went to bed, the way he had when he was a little boy.
May 2015
A Kiss For Mrs. Sissle
We did come upon a low cave, ten or so feet to the back, but there was nothing inside except empty beer bottles and a white paper bag shaped like a cat. So we sat like castaways at its entrance, knees touching, and watched the hourglass glitter of the moon on the black surface of the ocean. That was all. It was my first experience of nervous teenage heaven, and I doubted I would ever know anything so fragile and sublime again.
April 2015
Vote For Jesus
The short story is my brother got arrested. Again. In Pampa, Texas, this time: possession of marijuana and driving under the influence. “A total violation of my rights” is how he put it. They took his passenger into protective custody — “they” being animal control, since his passenger was a snake.
April 2015
Fathers And Sons
Some things, they say, / one should not write about. I tried / to help my father comprehend / the toilet
April 2015
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