Wasps
“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 →
Fox Season
Sounds like a woman being murdered, the young woman who cuts my hair in a neat bob says about the mating foxes in her parents’ yard. Last summer, alone in bed, I heard a woman screaming in our backyard. What’s the famous story about the woman who was murdered and no one called the police. Do you mind, my mom… Read more →
Where I Return
HORSES AND APPLES
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 →
Change of Season
I look out my window in our senior facility as winds turn the page forward— familiar change, we have seen it all before, some nearly a century of it; most of us will remember to set our clocks back tonight, and regain the hour of life we’ll lose again next spring. When we meet in the corridor we are acquainted… Read more →
Portrait of Big John the Football Manager
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 →
Mahshid Gorjian (a slideshow)
Seasonal Fruit
Our first summer together: the avocado tree in my backyard bowed its head under the weight of fruit so plump it would burst under the delicate pressure of your painted fingernails. The whole neighborhood must have heard us laughing — those little green planets in our hands! — because soon enough, the local mayas were singing at our doorstep, little… Read more →
Four Minutes
I scan a coworker’s bookshelves, my back to the revelry of guests I don’t know well, and never will. Ninety minutes is enough time spent steeped in the loneliness of this Mission District Christmas party. I drain my second margarita, bid the host goodbye and dash to Church and 16th to catch the last MUNI train of the night. I’m… Read more →