What You Can’t See
South Vietnam — 1968 Clack went the shutter on my camera. The two South Vietnamese soldiers looked at one another, nodded and stepped back from the edge of the bomb crater. One pulled a cigarette from a pack in his breast pocket and lighted it. He offered one to his comrade, who shook his head and turned to look across the rice paddies toward the high ground, where a network of trees drew clean, black lines against the yellow sky. A hand squeezed my shoulder, and I looked up. The company commander tapped my camera with his finger and whispered, “Take any...
Read MoreEggs
Babies know when they come out unwanted. I did. I was born with a hole right inside my heart and spent too many years tryin’ to fill a space that didn’t want to be filled. I never knew the empty could be so heavy. Daddy already flew away by then, and Momma didn’t care enough to use her own healin’ touch. She shoved me off on Rayanne, who never wanted me anyhow. We lived down a long, dirt road and out past a barn older than my Momma. She told me once that she kissed a boy in the hay field down the way. She said he smelled like fresh dirt and had a freckle by his left ear. She’d...
Read MoreNylon Rain
The rain comes down on nylon lines as nylon rain, each fiber-optic strand a light shine- shrine, and a vibrating way.
Read MoreThe Truth About the Expulsion
An Address Delivered at the East Orange Women’s Conference First of all, I wanted to go. Adam was the one who wanted to stay. If it was up to him, we’d still be there, spending eternity in mind-numbing peace and tranquility, every day sunnier and cheerier than the previous. Sure, it was Paradise, but Paradise gets old real fast without any contrast. Besides, it wasn’t Paradise with a guy like Adam. Bloated with his First Man persona, he thought it was he and only he who should name all the creatures that walked on land and swam in the sea. And they were the most boring names....
Read MoreA Love Story
Alex felt so doped up with painkillers and anxiety-reducing drugs that when they wheeled him into the operating room, he couldn’t worry, had he wanted to. The one thing he recalled was asking if his wife had been notified. A familiar voice whispered, “I’m here, honey. I’m here,” but too much was going on to make sense of anything. He saw bright lights and people in blue scrubs. Someone told him to count backwards from ten. He reached nine when a new calmness allowed him to block out the image of a car racing through a red light straight toward him. It seemed...
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