I Loved Lucy
I wanted to be like Lucy—trapped on the IRT with a loving cup stuck upside down on my head— and not get mugged. To steal John Wayne’s footprints from Grauman’s Chinese Theatre without remorse, then bunk with Ethel for a whole week, mindless of half-naked show girls, the fact that …
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My Birthfather Explains His Death
Antarctica, 1979 Death is not dark as you’d imagine, but white, frozen, your name signed into the otherworld of stone and ice. It’s easy to die — one day you’re 22, offloading a Coast Guard cutter, and the next, you’re tumbling toward the snowsheet, pinned beneath it, your heart slowing …
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These Things Permit Less Gratitude
Rising like westerly smoke, the death last night was beautiful. I’ve got no reference for forests burned to ash, transformed to sky, but for now I’ve named this East Coast evening – Dimmed. Disappointment in Dad’s bloodshot grey, become Maine sunset. I shudder with the coming morning. Death may be …
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Dissociation
Squish your toes into the creamy sheepskin rug and marvel at how they disappear—swallowed by softness. Sunlight spills through large sash windows, turning the hairs on your forearms golden and lifting some of the intensity from the daffodil-yellow wallpaper in this unfamiliar space. You’re standing with your back to your …
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The Answer for Everything
If the body is indeed composed of mud and fossil, rib cage woven of branches clipped from tired acacia. If the moon pulls back from its seat as planned. If comets pour into one another like coffee from a carafe and the calendar becomes either all-dark or all-light. If …
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Lamentation
After a while you become aware of nothing but a culture of feeling, of black days, of schism, evil for evil, the common destiny of the human being getting thrown off course. It’s all one long funeral song. – Bob Dylan The house is smaller than Elizabeth remembers, but the …
Read MoreLetter From the Co-Editor, 8.1
Dear Fellow Readers and Writers, My attention, over the last year, has turned to lichens. My obsession grew slowly, which is fitting, given the subject: Greenshield lichen grows roughly 5mm per year. It began last January when I purchased Flora: Inside the Secret World of Plants and decided to read …
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