Browse Topics
Grief
Burning
A human body on fire on a quiet street in a safe European city is a scene your mind is remarkably unequipped to comprehend. You see it first through the clear back panel of the bus-stop shelter as you get off the bus: Just a pile of something burning. Much bigger than a campfire. Perhaps a bonfire to keep the homeless warm.
March 2010
Sparrow
What could the Bible mean / when it says no sparrow falls / without God’s notice?
January 2010Scars And Scales
The moon casts a pearl-colored path, and I, ducking into shadows, carry a platter of beef roast, so raw I can smell the blood, to the edge of the backyard swimming pool. Already Dad has reached the shallow end, and my younger twin brothers, Michelangelo and Leonardo — my mother had a passion for art — are not far behind. I coo to them; their tails move from side to side in anticipation.
January 2010
Two Days (Or, The Joys Of Being On Television)
I didn’t want to go, but my fiancée, Cora, insisted it would be good for me. She and I hadn’t been apart for more than a few hours at a time since I’d left the hospital, where my left arm had been removed after a car accident. Now I was to spend the weekend at a crippled-children’s camp.
January 2010
Eighteen Attempts At Writing About A Miscarriage
I was alone with the doctor when I found out. I had come in for an emergency appointment because that morning I’d happened to notice the tiniest of smears on my toilet paper: a light brown smudge. Scott had asked if he should come with me, but I’d said no; it was nothing. If I hadn’t glanced down at the paper, I wouldn’t have known. I was eleven weeks along.
December 2009Dinosaurs
When we arrived in Florida, my in-laws found us at the baggage claim, and it seemed at first that the visit could be a success. They were touchingly nervous, and they’d dressed carefully: Floyd in pressed khakis and Dolores in a coral dress. Her dyed hair escaped from her scarf, and when she leaned close, I could see the fabric was patterned with parrots. She likes birds, I thought. Something to talk about later.
December 2009
Stones
I strode impatiently over the drenched grass, rattling in my hand two rough stones that we’d brought from Maine, in keeping with the Jewish tradition of leaving stones on the grave to show that we had visited. They were striped rocks: white, gray, and black layers of prehistoric past.
April 2009
Boston To New York
“I can’t come to New York,” Edith says over the phone to her only living daughter. She is squeezing a sponge that doesn’t need to be squeezed, standing at her kitchen sink, where a window looks out at skeletal tree branches. It is early April, and the trees of Boston have weathered much this winter: blizzards that smothered cars, wind that twisted metal, hail that punched through glass.
March 2009
Bananacake
We bought our rabbit seven years ago from a Frenchwoman named Daphne who owned the Country Inn restaurant on Route 28. Daphne bred two types of rabbits: those for soup, and those for pets. Violet chose ours from the pet bin: a white female with gray “points,” meaning its ears, paws, and tail were gray. The rabbit was four months old and seven inches long.
February 2009Cleaning Out Zaide’s Apartment
His scent still lingered in the black heat / of his darkroom, where he spent decades / developing his meticulous world / of insects and flowers.
February 2009
Personal, political, provocative writing delivered to your doorstep every month—without a single ad.
Subscribe Today