Father in the Bread Aisle at the Newtown Safeway
The choice seemed consequential only a week ago — would I finally get it right? — remember that it was whole wheat instead of multi and what kind of fancy swirl? — but now I could pick the wrong one and it wouldn’t make any difference at all. Except I can’t for the life of me choose the loaf I should. Not now. So I stand in the bread aisle like a sentenced man deciding on my last meal, and trying to keep this decision as simple as it ought to be while the packages trick the eye with their redundancy, each tie twisted so tightly it would take forever to open them...
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of furious strum, permanent press, truncated Average Joes along for the ride, becalmed anonymous donors beset by mood swings, voided warranties lacking proximate cause; chattering mimes at ease in no-man’s-land, kid-gloved, tear-to-open-push-to-reseal savvy, posturing, taken aback in soft-serve swirls, tilting at no shoes, no shirt, no service signs; mood lit slow dancers fumbling for dimmer switches, neutral buoyancies shaken on the rocks, sucker bets stirred by happy hour distractions, enduring last calls, twists of fate, transactions of No!; plain speakers who know what is, is,...
Read Moreas if they once had teeth, your hands
As if they once had teeth, your hands nibble on apples half mud, half worms –you eat only what falls to the ground rotted, serene, made dark by the welcoming slope into evening –you pick the way every stone points where to rest, has this urge to be useful, calms your arms still attached to the same mouth and milky breath, holding on –you share these twins with the sun stretching out on your forehead shining in its darkness from the start and in you arms the word for offering, for stillness,...
Read MoreDialogue with Myself
Many years ago — born — dairy country — grandparents all dead — mother, youngest of thirteen, more cousins than cows — born — same moment when a drop of rain fell, two hands squeezed a bovine teat, a mango toppled from a tree — a cool ocean breeze — the smell of ginger from the nearby factory — all grandparents in the ground — none to pat the baby’s head, none to get drunk in the celebration, slip and stumble on the stairs — even my father, a few months to live — what’s the story? life’s...
Read MoreDinner at Grandma’s
She blinked like mid-June nightfall and the world pruned, wobbled from her as if spilled from a raisin box. She blinked as if the earth and the heavens met in her eyelid’s crease, where beetles hum in reeds and lazy streetlights clack. She blinked as if she whisked the rippled sky orange with her fingers down her tired road to the sun’s festering embers. The same blink each time she handed me from boxes at her feet a chipped figurine, a glass-globed grasshopper, a framed picture of Grandpa. “These are for you.” She wrapped with her hands my hands around each trinket, skin wimpled as...
Read MorePick a Path with Heart
the Chinese fortune cookie fortune said, meaning with all my soul, with all my strength, with all the fortitude I could muster. Just that much courage. I’ve always known this rhythm my feet make, the left, right, left, depending on the pavement with Loose Strife on the shoulders of the road, Robins dotting the margins like emphatic punctuation marks. Mourning doves coo; cardinals provide that vital splash of color. Gravel, asphalt, clay, or dirt, how to choose? When there’s always that fifty-fifty chance for rain, for rubble and construction, for mud and its myriad distractions...
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