It had been three years since I’d visited family for holidays, not because I didn’t want to visit them but because I always had to work or do something. We were gathering for a holiday lunch, and I’d picked up a couple of vinegar pies, pies made by a bakery in the Appalachians close to my house that had origins… Read more →
Ah Ma’s steady, tenacious, rough hands hand me a pan masked with a film of oil to soap in the sink, let hot water soak it for an hour, Ah Ma’s mouth says, and the oil easily will come off easier, in the meantime, here are chopsticks, bowls, and cups for you to clean. Ah Ma’s mouth crunches out strings of words… Read more →
At a nature writing workshop, I confessed I didn’t like birds. They can prey onto a head. Their beaks are pointy, and they make weird noises. They seem so unclean. It’s nice to see them in the sky with wings. I like to fly. I like to get on airplanes. Sometimes, when I run, I put my arms out. Birds… Read more →
A cliché of stardust and the machinery of miracles plugs his ears against sound bound in light leaking music; a tuba and a flute wave past on a cloud of stardust; whatever it is, she hears it whenever she’s with him, until he dances into the black hole without her. Until he dances into the black hole, he waves past… Read more →
Sylvia, my lover, owns an African Yellow Parrot that she named Shirley Jones. Shirley Jones sits on her shoulder or head singing songs from the musical Carousel. When I come over one night a week, she gets locked in her cage, which is so big that it sits on the floor and houses 6 trees, innumerable shrubs, 4 trapeze swings,… Read more →
My father took a hardcover book from a shelf in his “library,” which occupied a poorly lit room at the front of our house. “I got this from a guy who converted a barn into a used-book store,” he said. “You should read the Russians. They taught the Poles. You should read the Russians and the Poles. When you’re finished,… Read more →
for Ross Gay Sitting at the stoplight, I watch the clouds move, wishing I was somewhere out in nature: the park, the woods, the childhood farm where I grew up, where I used to spread on my back on the grass with my sister and look up, naming clouds, in all their shapes and sizes. It’s a cold day, wet,… Read more →
On/Off Switch Broken On a fine Sunday morning Mark Zuckerberg woke up with a large, reddish pimple on his thorax. It looked like an on/off button. He turned himself on, and the world went unfactual. Gone Unfactual for Coffee Wearing dark sunglasses and a Gone Unfactual t-shirt, Mark Zuckerberg was waiting for a coffee at Peets, scratching his nose. The skin… Read more →
An assistant coach comments on Big John’s yoga practice Outside a training room, some years ago in England: “At first we were quite skeptical, of course, of John’s unorthodox methods, but, well, pfff, the results speak for themselves, don’t they? Imagine my surprise, pushing open the door to see all the lads on their backs, clasping their feet with their… Read more →
“I’ve got the ennuis,” he says rummaging through my utensil drawer, his words slowing like cold molasses. He finds the vegetable peeler, eyeballs the blade for dried up bits of carrot. “I do wash my dishes,” I tell him. “And you don’t strip the skin off dried figs. That’s just dumb.” Two years ago, my brother started showing up on… Read more →