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Lady Con

Even with two thick coverlets over the blankets, her pelvic bone pressed like a wooden hanger against my cheek; I was sure it would leave a red mark. She had been eating for nearly two weeks now. How thin could she have been when she was first released?

Abortion

Secret codes, an underground network of doctors, complications

A Kind Of Power

Then, a mist drifted up in front of my eyes. It started gray. It began to burn, to get redder and redder and the words I heard rolling from my lips were like the words my grandpa knew. They were holy words, words of the old prophets. Wanton. Strumpet. Whore. Sister of the serpent, angel of evil, Satan’s bitch, vessel of filth, pestilence of desire, demoness eater of the soul.

Shyness

Picture days in grade school, summers on fire lookouts, Saturday afternoons at the movies

Songs Of Aging Children

My mother is seated in the shade of the balcony of her apartment in San Diego, the sun relentless in this desert-become-a-city. She stares into that cloudless blue sky. Cancer has begun its final assault upon her body.

Reunions

A repressed memory, a custody battle, a summer on the prairies

Thin Ice

When we got to the pond, he stopped calling her name. The hole was black, and little black waves splashed against the jagged edges of the broken ice. Father took one step onto the pond, but had to jump back.

Into The Flood

Dancing

Miss Valentine’s School of Social Dance, jitterbugging in Calcutta, the “big girl’s ward” in the crippled children’s hospital

Summer

The summer I was fifteen my father moved out, my breasts grew in, and my mother told me to call her Eve.