Be easy. No—Be smooth enough that you don’t have to be as hard as a four-year-old saying “hydrangeas” is what he’d say. He said it as slick as an ice cube sliding on itself or as a puck coasting toward goal. Maybe that’s what made him a Boston weed man, or maybe being a weed …
over dumplings & rice, Nancy says you’re welcomeas she considers her ancestors & the goldsthey left, a mug of oolong clenched in her hands, tightclaws. for the plants & their leaves you steep, the anti-oxidants, the paper, the bark, the silk of the insects.you’re welcome for the gunpowder, for the colorunfurling across the cloudless dark. …
Better takeout was thriving in DeKalb County,but the school system hadn’t caught up,its languages unable to support the Greek bakery,dim-sum parlors, or lox-and-bagel shops.We knew the Roman Empire went beyond Italyand Pizza Hut was not quite Italian,but we had to distinguish Latin partiesfrom the French, Spanish, and German.Latin drew the kids who would opt for …
Someone stops over unannounced like the old days,so I pop open that bottle of Sancerre I’ve been saving.Talk turns to carp that reached the roadwayafter Thursday’s three inches of rain, how some saidInvasive, let them die, others said Naturalized,let them live, someone asked for a net and others saidthey’d catch them with their hands. I …
I’d heard plenty about how a mother’s devotion to her kids is primal. I got it—I could imagine that sort of wild, beyond-the-brain love, the kind of protectiveness that can sprout claws and incisors. I expected having a child to change my priorities, my routines, my capacity for tenderness and rage. I didn’t expect it …
