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The Cooking Lesson

A good fire, in fact, is like a perfect lie. It takes myriad shapes, it mesmerizes, it consumes itself and leaves nothing behind. Somehow, in my mind, the perfect fire and the perfect lie had always been intertwined.

What Miss Lena Prays For

Miss Lena goes into the dressing room, closes the folding three-way mirror, gets down on her knees, and prays. I wonder if she’s really praying for customers, as she tells me, or if she’s praying for bigger things, like peace in Yugoslavia, where she is from and which she calls Yugo, or maybe an end to homelessness. It seems to me you shouldn’t waste a prayer on attracting customers.

The Lap Of Luxury

Russell was telling the three of us — Melody, Leigh, and me — about the last moments of his mother’s life. The three of us were crying, but Russell wasn’t. His face was pale, not his usual ruddy hue that made him look as if he’d just come in from jogging a few miles.

Monogamy

Wife-swapping, ten fucks, a master’s thesis in comparative literature

The Hunt And The Kill

I went on hearing the term now and then, but I didn’t bother myself much about screwing until somebody said that Barry had screwed Maria in the catwalk, a narrow, fenced walkway overgrown with bushes. I pictured a yellow-handled screwdriver and decided that Barry must have fixed something for her: her skateboard, maybe. Barry was three years older than me and Maria was a year older and pretty.

One Hand Clapping

I studied Ram Dass’s spiritual odyssey as if it were a map to some mysterious continent whose existence I’d only recently discovered. A year earlier, I’d taken LSD for the first time; I, too, had experienced a radical shift in consciousness as I’d glimpsed my true self, and tasted the glory at the heart of creation.

Secrets

I have been in many women’s groups: walking groups, writing groups, ritual groups, clothing-exchange groups, exercise groups, even a long-ago Tupperware group. So it wasn’t odd to hear Sarah talk, at a meeting of my oldest women’s group, about an entirely different group of women with whom she met. These women rode horses into the deepest part of the woods, and upon arrival, each told a secret.

The Date

A man I like is coming for dinner tonight. This means I don’t sleep very much, and I wake disoriented in the half light of dawn, wondering where I am. I look at my naked body stretched diagonally across the bed; I look at the untouched breasts, the white belly, and I wonder. I don’t know if this man will ever touch me, but I wonder.

Selected Poems

The Road Out Of Acorn Lake

You can’t find Mr. Right. You won’t meet a guy with enough criminal swagger in him to make your skin dance, and enough farmer in him to let you sleep through the night. You have to pick one and learn to ignore your ache for the other.