Then Mr. Flip Flop says, “I would like the steak—the kitchen needs to cut it into cubes and skewer it.”
Read MorePink pillowy cherrystone
goddesses
birthed in salt
I can’t recall how the argument began. It was one of those marital spats that started as nothing and became something it never should’ve been. Sweet grapes unexpectedly crushed, boiled, and barreled until they were so acidic they could cut tongues.
Read MoreThe house where I live is deep in the woods. The driveway is overgrown with moss. A defiant mushroom has pushed up through the tar where the drive meets the street. How its roots wound their way under and up, I cannot imagine. It is ready to pick, or poison.
Read MoreGrowing up in Alabama, I measured childhood in four seasons: summer; football season; Christmas season; and right after, stretching across the calendar until May, was always the longest season—tornado season.
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When I was at boarding school, it was my misfortune to be in love with my bullies. Their dark suaveness thrilled my bones.
Read MoreLooking up from where I lie freezing, I blink into the terrifying vast, into the violent white consuming the trees, the mountains, all and everything, until my mind also goes white, and I become more and more tired, drifting slowly into the final sleep. Then, interrupting my thoughts, Billy will say with his mouth full, “You mind if I steal a few fries?”
Read MoreThey’d had an intense courtship—dinners at all the cult restaurants in town, weekend trips to Montauk and Paris, lots of sex and missed work days—and then a spontaneous city hall wedding on the other end of an all-night, molly-fueled bender. Anne’s teeth were vibrating when she said, “I do.”
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The smell of him on her pillow was the thing Eesvari missed most: some sensitive soap mixed with his sweat. She wondered if his wife chose the soap, and if she did, which brand did they use?
Read MoreThe recreation room is large and clean
Dominated by a giant TV screen.
Around it residents nap in reclining chairs.
There is an upright piano, a table laid with sweets.
Something about his father
and a very expensive Stradivarius
An anecdote about two different
Elizabeth Bishops
The man who gave up drugs for God
raised a soprano sax, now a ram’s-horn
calling us to confess, now a muezzin’s
