A fifth-grade bully, a blossoming romance, a late-night crash
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You can prepare for some things. / Others fall on you like / meteors ripping open the sky.
Running is better for me than church; better than counseling, pills, or meditation; better than diet plans or twelve-step meetings. Running keeps me literally on the straight and narrow.
Like the Turin shroud with / its image of godliness, / her yoga mat holds / the tattoo of her body, each pose / immortalized by a particular / indentation, a stain of perspiration.
Impossibly bright stars fill the sky like silver glitter sprayed from a fire hose. And, to our good fortune, we’ve chosen to climb on the night of the summer’s largest meteor shower. Each shooting star is like a Roman candle.
We lived in a small yellow three-bedroom ranch on a dead-end street with no circle to turn around in: the street just ended. I had my own room, and my younger sister, Jody, had hers. There were big bay windows in front and a deck off the back, and my father built the house himself.
Standing at the entrance to the aerobics room, I think, All I have to do is get through the next forty-five minutes. I tell myself that kickboxing sounds like fun, not dreadful or boring. I chose kickboxing because it resembles martial arts — something I studied briefly in the past.
— from “A Pittsburgh Poem” | Imagine a man in a hat on a street early one morning in autumn. / This is my grandfather on his way to work at the brokerage firm. / He is a treasurer. He takes the bus down from the southern hills. / It is October 28, 1929.
My vertigo came on suddenly. It was past midnight, and I was listening to Coltrane for Lovers and doing the dishes when I began to wobble.
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Wallace Stevens
Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake.
Wallace Stevens
I met my boyfriend through the personals. His ad said that he was looking for a woman who was “athletic.” I assumed that was a code word for “thin.” After we’d been dating for several months, he told me I was wrong, that “athletic” had actually meant athletic.