The first time she met her mother-in-law, my mom committed a faux pas that still makes her cringe. My grandmother, Anna, dropped a piece of Wedgwood—sky-blue stoneware, neoclassical designs—into Mom’s lap as they sat together in what working-class Philadelphians called the “pahlor.” Mom gushed her thanks, only to realize years later that the vase hadn’t …
I want to name a girl baby Nougatine. Because French. I don’t know what it means, maybe some sort of candy, which would be like calling a baby Caramel or Skittles or Bubble Gum, but those aren’t French. And I don’t have a baby to name anymore. I give the name a test run by …
I met Ivan in Cuba, three years before I quit kayaking and nearly a decade after my brother—Jack—and I found the man in the canal. We were in Havana to qualify for Worlds. It was 1989, and the sport had begun to sour for me in the heat of Jack’s glory, so instead of spending …
Maybe she’d known some other Rumpelstiltskin. He’d never met anyone else with his name, but it was possible. Not probable, but still. Maybe she’d known a few other people with the name and just took a wild stab at it. She had three guesses, after all. It wasn’t like she got it right out of …
Artist’s Statement Intuitive painting is the act of making marks and spreading pigment on a surface until it conveys a personal aesthetic. There is no predetermined finish or elaborate planning in my work. My paintings are a reflection of my life experience. I draw upon all I have encountered along this path. An understanding of …
I set to work on the healing loom I let the loom-weights fall I let the loom-weights stutter.In the dark they spoke indifferently about suffering.In the dark they may have been something else entirely but I was not with them in the dark.I washed my face it was morning the flowers like flayed hands. Whose …
It is nearly true: I am learning to love the ellipsis like a waitfor a kiss as you stir-fry dinner, little uptick at your lips because you know. You knowI wait impatiently, genetically, my mother’s eyes, blue fishbowls, pop, she is certain she can’t breathe if I delaya confirmation of ease: are we well? Who …
She dreamt of her days lived, they were that sweet. In the morning there were omelets stuffed with goat cheese, and in the afternoon, espresso in the park, the one with the pond and long-necked swans that coasted along the water’s glass skin; there were movie theaters and bars and just when Eve thought there …
because you still grind yourselves into glass / powder just to wake me each morning. You grew into spoiled wet dreams who knew / my mother was dying before she did / her monthly strippingfor doctors; your quiet voice / the steady pang of my dull incisor. The texture of her pinto beans dissolved / …
Sapello sky open as a first breath filled pink with tomorrow’s weather mismatched fenceposts splintering into Ys those warped bodies embalmed with winter the wind moves in summer skeletons of alfalfa turned tumble -weed patches and pine branchesrecite mariachi music whistled by ancestors shuffling playing cards around a home -made graveyard in the field …