Browse Topics
Grief
On A Ship
He was still reading the Book of Job. The prophet Jonah tried to flee from God unto Tarshish, and Isadore Lemberger was fleeing from death unto Buenos Aires.
February 2021The Loss
Some treat shiva purely as a party. Some have a mournful air. Some look deeply into your eyes, and you can see that they have suffered, too. This is the higher purpose of suffering: to inspire deep-eyed compassion. It’s one of those truisms that is actually true.
January 2021
Play, Hands
Here is the truth: I think some deep wisdom inside me (a) sensed the stress, (b) was terrified for me, and (c) gave me something new and hard to focus on in order to prevent me from lapsing into a despair coma — and also to keep me from having a jelly jar of wine in my hand.
January 2021
After We Buried The Dog In The Dark
He came back. I saw him / in the grass, the white of him / glowing in the floodlight, / the wind turning it off / and on again. / I saw his face at the door, / waiting to be let in, / his nose leaving smears / across the glass.
December 2020The Smaller House
While building the larger house, he lived a very simple life / in the smaller house he’d built before, the house without / water or power, the 12 x 20 foot house with three windows
November 2020Touchless
When both of us were fourteen days clear of getting over COVID, I left our New York apartment for the first time in a long while and quickly became alarmed. No one was on the street. This was in April, when tourists normally descend on Manhattan in flocks, even in our off-avenue neighborhood. But this year a tumbleweed would not have been out of place.
November 2020
Debris
When Sarah’s mother, Penny, got sick four years into our marriage, we decided to move back to Mississippi, considering it penance for the sins of our youth. We signed a lease on a house, a white one-story on the historical register with a wraparound porch and angels, stars, and the moon painted on the transom above the front door.
November 2020
Sitting On My Mother
The scar in the turf in front of her headstone has long since healed. Her death date was blank at her funeral, reflecting our disbelief. It now reads, Sept. 11, 2010. Beside that is another blank for my father.
October 2020
Letter To My Father
Stride from the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face. Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
October 2020The Race
I used my legs and heart as if I would
gladly use them up for this,
to touch him again in this life
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