Where I’m From
A blood orange sun told me not to stay. Ears and heart outstretched, I’d bow to its splendor until it dropped from the horizon. Born to be Wild screeched from huge speakers at the church carnival, where we hid behind big trees with former altar boys, tantalizing our younger sisters still afraid of the dark, who dressed in Danskin short sets. Our bachelor neighbor next door neighbor lived with his married sister. A staid accountant at the electric company by day, on Saturday nights he would stumble home, cutting through the neatly trimmed hedges, blood running down his face. But my fear of...
Read MoreRushing
He looked at his notes. Played 1994-2004 for the Detroit Lions. Only player to rush for over 1,000 yards in every season of his NFL career. Broke 2,000 yards in 1990. MVP the same year. Nine-time Pro Bowl selection. There was no point: he’d already had them memorized before he’d even written them down. There was only one item that he had to make it a point to memorize, one that he had been chanting on the twenty-minute drive from campus down Highway 6 West. Don’t ask about the Super Bowl. Cameron looked up and took a deep breath. “OK,” he said to himself, opened...
Read MoreMaking Safe to Tell
The only way I know —| I ask him if his faith is beside him. For I am about to tell him news precious to me, her name unspoken for so long. Fragile like the skull of a sparrow, grapes. Mother’s cut glass decanter crossing the Atlantic Ocean in a marked box. Spider web, tissue paper and butterfly wing, a rose in the moment before its petals fall all at once. Like a camel’s back, bridge over water, tibia of horses. Like painting in sand, a thin blue shell, like peace and ego, the underbelly of things. Reminded, he gentles himself to listen, folding his rough-skinned...
Read MoreFeatured Works: Week of August 10 (Summer Memories)
As we in the Northern Hemisphere luxuriate in the final weeks of summer, this seemed a perfect time to share some reflections on the season. “Edinburgh Rock” by Joanna M. Weston recalls the tastes and sights of a childhood vacation memory. “Housekeeping” by Anthony Botti reflects on hot summer days spent cleaning with his mother, instead of swimming. “The Blue Hour” by Anthony Botti peers deeply into the summer...
Read MoreThe Blue Hour
arrives. The late light turning on me draws the day closer, the east meadow beyond a grove of birches, some animal stirring at the edge of sight. Peering out, my mind grows sharper. Let it happen — release, release like the wind riffling through the trembling ferns after two days of rain. In places only whispering birds fly to, everything collapses into green shadows, my eyes adjusting to the faceless dark. I remember a time being afraid of it, even when I was most hidden. Now it feels safe, the way the perfected dark lets it all pass without comment, marking each thing. What I wanted...
Read MoreHousekeeping
I never saw my mother in a bathing suit like the other wives on campus, the boarding school where our fathers taught. The summer of ’76 stuck to our tanned skin in the boredom of long, humid days in PA. The radio reported record heat waves that year. On Saturdays we were barred inside until the house was “redd up,” a command in her Pittsburghese to clean up. She knelt down by our side on hardwood floors, a bucket of Murphy oil soap at her hip. Row upon row of washed out photographs of our ancestors in the hills of San Martino peered down from the mantel. Yet this was the...
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