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Alcoholism
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
The Routine
I take the test, grade myself strictly, and add up the points. The result is that I’m likely an alcoholic and should seek treatment as soon as possible. I take the test again and grade myself more forgivingly, because forgiveness is a virtue.
April 2019
Fiction
Waiting For My Rape
This man could have been my rapist, but he looked too nice. He had thick, wavy hair, like a movie star from the seventies, and a jawbone that could take out your eye. I hung my feet over the edge of the roof and let myself slide into his arms.
August 2018
Poetry
A Bright-Yellow-And-Black Bird
Right now there is a bright-yellow-and-black bird — / whose name I used to know / before I started taking this pill / called Lexapro
July 2017Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Steps One Through Four
While my father was stationed in Germany and dating my mother, he wrote her a letter saying, “Someday I’d like to have twins with blond hair and blue eyes.” Twenty-seven years later, here I am, one of his identical blond-haired, blue-eyed twin girls.
April 2017
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Last Call
I was lucky. I didn’t have a physical dependency on alcohol. I just drank to be like everyone else at the party. Faced with a choice between dying young in a tangle of smashed things or pulling it together to have a regular life, I chose the regular life. I traded living on the edge for just living.
October 2014
Readers Write
In The Dark
Reading Goodnight Moon to a child, cross-country skiing at noon under a full moon, gasping at the sight of the ocean awash in moonlight
September 2013
Fiction
Blueberries
Basia watches her granddaughter, Lalka. No matter what else she does — digs in the garden, pulls weeds in the greenhouse, peels the potatoes — always she watches her granddaughter, who has a reddish-purple birthmark over her neck and jaw and part of her cheek. Her husband, Zbigniew, watches Lalka too.
April 2013
Readers Write
Warning Signs
An identity thief, a flat tire on the Williamsburg Bridge, a cat named Cinnamon
February 2012
Poetry
Leaning Back In My Chair, Feet Up On The Garden Table
I find nothing to do / And fall asleep under the sun / Near my wife’s peony beds.
August 2011
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