I learn the blueberries I am eating this morning were flown in from Chile. They have a dusting of white on them and are firm, some with little nubs of green where they’ve been picked by someone I will never meet. Their origin is found on the container, but also in the article I have read about other fruits from… Read more →
When my mother was a girl during the Depression, the circus rolled into her prairie town on slow trains, then set up on the fairgrounds at the edge of town. She loved the big tent, the smell of sawdust. My circus? At the cement civic center downtown. I was not captivated by the clown cars, the balloons, the woman riding… Read more →
We lock every window and door, a futile effort to keep our children safe from hazed atmosphere. But I do not want to talk about the air or how much my eyelids itch. Instead, I have chosen to fall in love with your wrist and relish in the way it bends as you chop an onion, how you cradle the… Read more →
i. My harp Check it out. Ten holes, steel cover plate, wooden comb, brass reeds hidden within the holes. Engraved onto the top of the cover plate is a Victorian-style portrait, a man’s profile, high collar, sideburns down to his jawline, surrounded by a garland of flowers, and the words Marine Band, M. Hohner. It fits in the palm of… Read more →
Excerpted from Fighting Pollution and Climate Change: An EPA Veteran’s Guide How to Join in Saving our Life on Planet Earth, by Richard W. Emory, Jr. www.fightingpollutionbook.com, BookLocker Publishing, August 2020. At the sounding of the horn, some women—permanent residents of our little town—grabbed their sharpest knives and rushed out their front doors. In the street, they were joined by… Read more →
Pacific golden-plover in the sand, I sit on the shore of Lake Anza and laugh. Playing cards with Aidan on a rock and pretending that the birds we see sing in A minor, we debate on whether or not we want to swim when the signs warn us of toxic algae in the water. The heart of the matter is… Read more →
The last time I had sex was Thanksgiving Eve into Thanksgiving morning, 2019. This was the last sex I had with this guy I’ll call Jack. Jack and I had been having sex for about six weeks, not long enough or often enough (thrice daily), but it was always fucking awesome. Yeah, no. Jack and I didn’t have sex and… Read more →
A spark bird is first love, the bird that ignites a heightened interest, an out-of-the-blue fascination. I was sparked by the Bewick’s wren, a small bird with a big voice. Not brilliantly hued like a cardinal or bluejay, my starter bird, my first infatuation, is gray-brown with stark white eyebrow stripes and a perky, black-streaked tail. I first singled them… Read more →
One evening about ten years ago, in a suburb of Pittsburgh, my twenty-six-year-old son, Matt, and I walked a few blocks to get pizza. Soft yellow sunlight, on its way past the horizon, slanted through the trees. A light breeze tickled the skin on my sleeveless arms. “I should have a sweater,” I said. “This is nothing,” Matt said. “This… Read more →
She knew that she had to grab the snake right at the back of its head. That way it wouldn’t be able to turn and bite her. She knew it was just a garter snake, though her grandma’s calling it a gardener snake still clung to memory if only because the snake was in her garden, her perennial bed. The… Read more →