I have tried for weeks to find the poetry in my mother’s madness. I find it, then lose it, then find it again. My mother spent years buying gemstones off the television, only to hold them up to the sun in her backyard and watch them sparkle. She is not a simpleton, distracted by shine, … Continue reading
Category Archives: Creative Non-Fiction
Day 226 of 35 (Day 16 of NaPoWriMo)
Past a verdant entrance, eschewed, disconnected. Parenthetical emotive flame low enough to veil cadence and demand. The sea questions me with ambiance, salt and camphor. A slow manner lets loose the cant of conspirators Language cannot mar the lady, though on pages lingers pain and memento. Today my sad tongue passes saints: part question, mostly … Continue reading
Day 101 of 35
If you ever lived in a desert as a child you know that every so often you miss it. Not for its expanse of night sky, the way the stars never surrender to the dark while you lay on the hood of your grandmother’s Impala, and not for the lizards you hunted with your sister … Continue reading
Day 100 of 35
Continued from Day 99 of 35: He took them apart, stripped them to their gears, cleaned and reassembled, and still, the ornate French mantel clock and the cuckoo were a millisecond apart, and the Grandfather was always a full tick-tock behind—its chime the last to announce the passing hour. I came home once and slept … Continue reading
Day 49 of 35
Summer It was the 4th of July the mountains behind us burned and continued to for a month. The flames died down but we lost the summer to smoke. When finally our mothers let us as far as the pier, we could not bring ourselves to pull the fish from the water, so we didn’t … Continue reading
Day 46 of 35
I am doing this remotely. From a space not my own. There’s something more to it this way. I am thinking of lovers, recent and gone. It’s always their hands that I crave. The calloused. The soft. I am finishing the gin. I am ready. Continue reading
Day 45 of 35
I am tired of suffering fools. My head hurts from the effort of it. There isn’t much else to say, except I am waiting for a dress the color of blood and dirt to arrive in the mail. Raw silk and full of folds. Continue reading
Day 37 of 35
It was one of those first nights in the dark of the kitchen when we sat nearly naked on the tile drinking the last bottle of cheap champagne. The dogs uncertain what to make of us licked our faces and curled themselves at our feet. I knew then. Continue reading
Day 36 of 35
Brother At four you were fascinated with the length of my adolescent blonde hair, how I piled it high at the top of my head. You would climb into my arms, twist it, and say, “doorknob,” as if you could open me and crawl right in. When I put you down, you would settle for … Continue reading
Day 9 of 35
My lover has watched her all day, fallen a touch in love with her blonde hair, the way she won’t look him in the eye, her stories of departure. What cannot be carried is left behind. He imagines not slippers beside her bed, but a valise and shoes made for sprinting. He calls her a … Continue reading