I remember the summer after Chernobyl for its fertility and vibrant colors. Whether it was due to the high levels of radiation blown toward the Crimean Peninsula by the northern winds, as my family speculated later, or to my grandfather’s tireless efforts to turn a cleared patch of clay into a kitchen-garden, that year our …
“Now you need not die again, but still I wish you were here” – Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider My nephew is writing a book, he says, about Martin Luther King, Jr. “Now why would you do that?” I asked him. “Pick a topic without so much competition. Who’s going to read your …
A carpet of moss exhales inside an abandoned temple. A lone figure scrapes grime from a row of faded headstones. He brings flowers to a sunken patch of grass—chrysanthemum, hyacinth, pink lily mid-bloom—& lights a white candle beside the bouquet. Pacing the soil above his love’s stripped bones, upon the damp ground he kneels. Summer …
She’s a healthy mussel. . . . She’s a wicked mussel. She’s a sliver of the liver of a river whose liver is sick. An ugly river, voluble with its complaints. I had this story from precisely such a river. Well, and so the credence you accord to trickling notes diluted and caught up in …
On a Friday in June 2022 the nurse practitioner warned my husband, Brad, and me that it might be too soon to hear our baby’s heartbeat. “If we don’t hear anything,” she said, “I don’t want you to worry.” For the next few minutes, as she finicked with the Doppler and cocked her head this …
As a child, I puzzled over the biblical story of Eve’s creation from one of Adam’s ribs: “And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the LORD God had taken …
in the ER, on the gurney, white-sheeted, not yet cold. I fall on him. The husk of him. Still beautiful, that body. Long, lean, pleasingly hirsute. I love your fur, I used to giggle, stroking an arm, a leg. The nurses, the orderly, the so-young doctor recede, a sucking back my skin registers: their gaze …
He was late for the flight. She can’t find her sandals.He waved to her behind zigzagging stanchions. She thinks about her future. He used a towel for the leaky toilet.She scrubs the sink as rain overflows the street.He hated continental breakfast. She thinks continent, an adjectivefor restraint. He boiled water. She weighs out tea for …
There was so much quicksandin the movies when I was a kid,so that’s what I think of as I watchan ant thrash on the carnivorous leafof a butterwort plant, each attemptto free itself from the viscid tongueonly making the situation worse,a dawning panic as it lifts a legand with its mandibles tries to snip offone …
The 14A District Court stands near the cornerof Washtenaw and Carpenter, presiding overthe busiest intersection in the whole city, which meanswhen you’re being taken into custody, you can counton having a little extra time to wait. I cried at that light.My father told me to find a dunce cap for having the gallto pick a …
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