Browse Topics

Fidelity

She stood up. “Excuse me for interrupting,” she said to the minister, “but he can’t do that. He’s married to me already. We never really got divorced. I never gave him a divorce. Those are our children sitting there in front of you.” She addressed the bride. “It’s better for you to know now than to find out later.”

Staying Together

Being tied up till eternity through the children, writing to each other in a centrally located spiral notebook, consulting the I Ching

Losing A Preposition

In April, Boyd’s sister phoned from Los Angeles, where several years ago she had landed a leading part in a movie that flopped, was resurrected for a brief life on cable, and then disappeared. She kept auditioning for more movie parts but never got one.

Selected Poems

My Car

An unraveling marriage, a phobic non-driver, a father’s permission

Sunbeams

Sometime in your life, hope that you might see one starved man, the look on his face when the bread finally arrives. Hope that you might have baked it or bought it or even kneaded it yourself. For that look on his face, for your meeting his eyes across a piece of bread, you might be willing to lose a lot, or suffer a lot, or die a little, even.

Daniel Berrigan

Sunbeams

We live with one another on a rare life-sustaining planet as it makes a few dozen turns around its modest and finite star. The real news on this planet is love — why it exists, where it came from, and where it’s going. How love fares against hate and indifference is the only reliable measure of historical progress that we have.

Gil Bailie

A Summer Of Mowing Lawns

“Murine, is that you?” they’d call from behind the six-foot stockade fence that separated my yard from theirs. I’d come around the fence and see Herbert smiling and Wilda holding a plant. Wilda did most of the talking.

Promises

Driving home from work, Bones rehearsed what he’d say when he broke up with Linda. “I got to get out,” he might say. Or, “I’m no good for you.”

She Said, Can’t We Just Be Friends?

After a week of sleeplessness / he dozed off at last / in the hammock and was / awakened by the sound of dead leaves / dancing.