Diagnosis
I’ve joined the widow now who holds her breath and wears blue gloves to change hotel sheets with sets she brings from home, then leaves behind on mornings she flies out. I’ve joined him too, the lawyer who unscrews his toilet seats when summer grandsons weep and wave goodbye. The …
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The Advantages of Being a Desk
–***** I began my day at the office, attempting to scooch so far into the desk that it would envelop me. Though I couldn’t imagine the entirety of the process, I was convinced the desk would look the way invasive vines look when they overtake a sidewalk, a street …
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Words You Taught Me
Rubes: People who disgusted you. Gorge: What rose when people disgusted you. Y-M-C-Ack: The place where the rubes prattled on—especially in the women’s locker room—and made your gorge rise. You were a magnet for spit-talkers. The sight of blood running down a leg. The Y-IRE: The monthly newsletter published by …
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Open House, Sunday 2-5 pm
It’s a quiet street. “Shoes off, please, or there are booties at the door.” We can’t leave a trace as we traipse through: archeologists in a ruin, projecting civilization into empty rooms. “It’s currently unoccupied,” says the listing agent, as a dozen people squeeze around her. The owners are abroad, …
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Pine Street
cw: addiction A red pickup driven by no one he knew or ever would know came around the corner and swerved into his lane. The motorcycle slipped out from under him on the dirt shoulder. He flew forward, rolling a hundred yards and taking out a picket fence, stood …
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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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