Browse Topics

Losing Weight

Filing for divorce, buying a skirt that ended above the knees, getting a stomach-stapling operation

Past Imperfect

My first impulse was to correct her English: it might be better to say, “I have fallen in love with Lawrence.” We had been over the difference between the past perfect and the past imperfect tens of times, and she still didn’t get it. In the past perfect, the action was over and done with. But imperfect action had a continuing and vital connection to the present, which I knew was the case here: she had fallen in love with him and continued to be in love with him, at that very moment.

Sunbeams

As I grew to adolescence, I imagined, from closely observing the boredom and vexations of matrimony, that the act my parents committed and the one I so longed to commit must be two different things.

Shirley Abbott

Strange Places

A toilet paper roll, a tiny red metal bicycle, an out-of-body experience

Back

Selected Poems

Blind Spots

A portable electronic keyboard, a tumor, a charge of solicitation

Splitting

I come home one afternoon, in my first year of high school, and immediately go down to the basement, known as the “family room” in what were supposedly better days.

Sunbeams

There is a rhythm to the ending of a marriage, just like the rhythm of a courtship — only backward. You try to start again but get into blaming over and over. Finally you are both worn out, exhausted, hopeless. Then lawyers are called in to pick clean the corpse. The death has occurred much earlier.

Erica Jong

The Notary Public