On:

My mother always tells me, you’ve got to pick your gods.She says this, leaning at a crow’s angle over a cup of coffee,a glass of wine, through the oiled steam of a stir fried dinner; from under the tumble of her quilted bedclothes,voice muffled behind a peeling murder mystery;shouted outContinue Reading

On:

On Saturday morning, not too early, really,Sarah and I drove North, up out of the city,to leave it. The reason wasthat on this particular day, last year,both of us broke up with our respective partners.By accident (of course)they happened to be on the same day.Our breakups did.By happier accident, SarahContinue Reading

On:

My mother worries onebone in her body like the windwarps a grain field. It is the glowingmetal rod in her left shin — the poetry dowsing rod. At night she sleeps stilland the rod points up to her blood-pumping heart, twice out, years longto work, still — and glows blueContinue Reading

On:

In part, our cellar is a well.When the ground swells, pregnant with ocean brineand rain, the water rises: murky and dustclotted,filtered through groundfloor pores. In part, I remembermy mother downstairs in the slow, slow, steady tide, I remember herwildness, brave and rockjawed in the face of her house, her house’sbetrayal.Continue Reading

On:

We set ourselves out at dawn when there’s nothing but brinesoak’d air and heath. The least weird of our sisters takes out a green Crayola marker and colored in a burnt orange leaf this morning. The ink was too thin: too much water, not enough pigment, running black between theContinue Reading