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Parenting
Prodigal Daughter
Makendra trailed loss and mess and catastrophe the way Halley’s comet trails a cloudy veil of ice and gas. She was dark-skinned and lovely, with finely arched eyebrows and sharp cheekbones. She could have been a fashion model if not for the birthmark that covered one side of her face like a pale pink shadow.
January 2004
Blessings In Disguise
A ride to a piano lesson, a right hook, a trail of mud
September 2003
Rules Of The Dream
Last night I dreamed I was a Chinese man who worked in a nuclear power plant. The plant leaked radiation, and I spoke out about it and was denounced by the authorities. At home, my mother looked at me coldly and said that I was no longer her son.
August 2003
Marijuana
Two tightly saran-wrapped joints for Grandma, a baggie on the water fountain, Desi Arnaz
May 2003
Who Causes This Sickness?
Before Hippocrates and his Corpus — a collection of some sixty medical treatises that marked the birth of modern medicine — the ancient Greeks investigated illness by asking the question “Who causes this sickness?” The answer was often a capricious or malevolent deity. The Hippocratics dissolved this notion, professing instead the theory that the human body was comprised of four humors: blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile.
January 2003Lost In The War Of The Beautiful Lads
Three kids in a pickup truck. In a field. And Corrie in the middle. Her head on a shoulder. Another leaning against her. The three of them like a trio of knocked-over pins. One window shattered. Glass on their laps. An empty open CD case on Garrett’s knee. Corrie’s hand clutching a wilted moss rose so tightly the woody stem had split, leaving a thin gash across her tender palm.
September 2002
Bathifying
I am a bath mystic. You can also be one. Read this and decide if bath mysticism intrigues you.
August 2002
Remodeling The Hovel
I dig another nailhead out of the old siding with the cat’s-paw, slip a crowbar around it, and then draw the 16d sinker out. The squawk of the nail letting go jangles my nerves. If an unwelcome memory wanted to announce itself with a noise, the cry of a rusty nail would do the job.
August 2002
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