The Sea and More Than the Sea: A Review of Time’s Web & The Tired Apple Tree by Ruth Moore
If I was going to throw a dinner party and could invite three writers living or dead, who would they be? Djuna Barnes, Elena Ferrante, and Ruth Moore. Or maybe Wanda Coleman, Stanley Crawford, and Ruth Moore. Or Diane Seuss, Marcel Proust, and Ruth Moore. Ruth Moore makes my list …
Read MoreThe Smell of Him
Outport, Newfoundland, 1954 He smelled of fish and more fish, sharp as an unexpected slap. He smelled of today’s fish, yesterday’s, and last week’s, the fish of seasons, stretching back decades – his own few and those of his father and grandfather and some father before that. Fresh gurry …
Read MoreThe Headland
East Coast, Newfoundland, present time Always poor people, but they made a living. Land-poor, you might say. His grandfather had two hundred acres along the headland that he got from his grandfather. Wasn’t much use for it – just tuckamore and berry barrens, shore too high to bring a boat …
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The Half-Life of Human Memory
Some health problems attack methodically — cancer, heart disease, the slow drain of the body’s vigor as it ages. But more worrisome are the unpredictable things that happen without warning, when hard luck and outside forces coauthor narratives of tragedy. There’s a reason I often walk the same route home. …
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Achromatopsia
Colors hiding in the fields. Having fled my eyes in a sudden mutiny. A revolution rare among visual glitches. City rendered sad, a cold faded etching. Egg yolks the color of cream. Blood stains uncarnadined. Startled birds white on a gray laurel hedge. Went to sleep with the reds and …
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Elegy with Steam
When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me …
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because horse is the closest i can get to it
after Jack Gilbert the horse in my mind knows the moon well enough to not need to speak to it when i try to talk to horses i watch their feet aware of their weight i try to feel my own a horse knows when …
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Tell Me the Secret of Your Great Strength
The morning after a man was elected who had, arguably, the worst head of hair in American presidential history, I began pulling out my own. I would watch the news or read the paper, and my hands would wander, fitfully, until they found my hairline, twirling a few strands experimentally …
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We Are the Ghosts in the Rafters, Murmuring like Doves
The child is below us, but we dare to whisper, knowing the rain drowns us out; it slaps the window, smearing the moonlight to a buttery bridge across the slick black asphalt of the street below. She’s heard us before, easing doors open with a coy, feline nudge to check …
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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery
I. When Donny was a boy, his aunt caught him taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. She grabbed his wrist and told him he had two choices: she could tell his mother, or she could take him to the church to confess to the priest. Donny chose the priest. …
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