Blog : Beautiful-Things
Perennial
| March 18, 2019 Yesterday my uncle Russ, my dad's older brother, texted me a video of a peony bush in bloom. The plant isn't his—he left the farm where it grows, in the remains of his mother's garden, to become a middle-school band director a half-century ago. But he can't stop tending things, a dogged farmer....
Very Large Array
| March 11, 2019 While traveling in New Mexico, I made a pilgrimage to the high desert to see the Karl G. Jansky Array, curious to witness a telescope as big as a valley....
Midnight Feedings
| March 4, 2019 We are limbs, braided and heavy, under sheets reluctant to release us. We are dreams interrupted, sleep sliced away like an appendage, the knife a familiar siren, filling the space between walls. We are silhouettes, faceless shapes against muted window glow....
Young Moons
| February 25, 2019 The moon drifts in the west, too thin to be called a crescent, Venus above like a sleeping child lowered by invisible hands into a cradle. It's a glimmer in the sunset sky above a skyline of pine, a sweep of summer grass....
October
| February 18, 2019 October light leaks between slats of graying barn wood. A yellow stripe marks Craig's cheek, his shoulder. I taste salt and smell sun on skin and in the hay beneath me that makes our bed in the neighbor’s old hay barn, a place we run to in daylight....
Powerless
| February 11, 2019 Our off-the-grid neighbors say that they know when the power has gone out because a chorus of hums rises from the generators in the valley. Now, our house has joined that choir....
Life Science
| February 4, 2019 You taught me, once, about the Swainson's thrush—its call like an invitation to another world: a swirling up of sound, unseen. Teach me the names of all the birds you know, and how they sing....
Back Aisles (repeat)
| January 28, 2019 The library building was my body like your children are your body, like your spouse is your body. Its wood and glass grew out of my chest. It came with a key and code.Â
Mosque/Musk
| January 21, 2019 I want to tell you that the word 'musk' comes to us from the Sanskrit mushkas, meaning 'testicle,' testimony to source in the aromatic abdominal sacs of musk deer....
Say When, Say It Louder
| January 14, 2019 You pinned me to the basketball court in the middle of gym class while Mrs. Thompson was busy tending to a "situation" in the locker room, or off fetching ice from the cafeteria....
Ghost Sigh
| January 7, 2019 I survey the elegant glass skyline crowded on the tray: the fine-boned Chanel, curvy Burberry, sleek Cabochard. The bottles display various levels of fragrant amber liquid, belying their owner’s favor. Each has its unique cap or stopper, competing like fancy hats at the Derby....
Forced Quince, as Study
| December 31, 2018 The way, on the fourth day, the sepals' little leaflets, grown twice yesterday's size to a fourth inch, have curled back–like legs spread or backs arched—from the buds, and....
Pooled in Ripples
| December 24, 2018 I wasn't like the other 22-year-olds after you, carelessly wearing bright bikinis. I was too preoccupied with how I looked suddenly: child bearing hips, a soft middle....
Miracle at Delancey Street
| December 17, 2018 My drive to the Delancey Street Christmas Tree lot begins on snowy roads through a canyon hemmed by pinion and sage studded cliffs and the icy Rio Grande....
Hair and Nails
| December 10, 2018 Jen was so venomous that I stopped having my students read their journal entries aloud. She said such cutting things unsolicited. She made a student cry just by staring at him....
Standoff at Wolf Creek
| December 3, 2018 I tell Cory "no" again. I can't help him resurrect dinosaurs using chicken eggs, even if I am impressed that an eight-year-old already knows so much about genetics and paleontology....
When and How
| November 26, 2018 1) A tent flap When the zipper teeth cut the air, filling the tent, humid from a night of bodies letting out breath after breath....
First Flight
| November 19, 2018 My first memory is a lie: I am a baby, flying around the living room....
Eighteen, Both of Us
| November 12, 2018 And still unkissed. Blame it on our strict Christian homes, the rules at the Bible school we were attending, guilt, or just plain old nerves....
Correction
| November 5, 2018 I am correcting your typos (fallow becoming follow, gooing becoming going), correcting the interesting but incorrect with the boring and banal because what you meant was boring and banal....
Art Lesson (repeat)
| October 29, 2018 They saved it for Fridays. Every teacher had the same projects. Fall: iron leaves between waxed paper. Winter: chalk snow scenes on black construction paper. Spring: draw daffodils. Except for Miss Malik. She was young, pretty, and not a nun....
The Day to Day (repeat)
| October 22, 2018 Sifting the flour. Squeezing the lever once. And then waiting. For a moment, it is winter again. I take my finger and make snow angels in the little blue bowl. After you died, they said the only thing to do was keep on living....
Maps
| October 15, 2018 Dr. A, my mother's handsome Bolivian neurosurgeon, lost his father on Everest. I pictured whorls of snow, a crumpled map and a man, stepping into thin air....
Window Vent
| October 8, 2018 You take me for a ride in a sixties Oldsmobile. The radio doesn't work and you had to put additive in the gas....
Late
| October 1, 2018 You hoped she wouldn't show up today, the student who scares you. She in her crop tops and lace-up tanks, her camis with labels like Juicy or Nasty Gal that stick up between her thick shoulder blades....
My Grandmother's Pie Plate
| September 24, 2018 I'm the one filling it now, and I've never minded sugar under my fingernails less. Its surface is dark with shine; it's been swallowing butter and heat for two lifetimes at least....
The Band Reunited and We All Bought Tickets
| September 17, 2018 Praise God for a venue with a parking lot....
Vantage Point
| September 10, 2018 Some boys found a little brown bat in the parking lot outside the surgeon's office. Delicate as a tea bag, they poked it with a stick, kicked it....
A Grandmother Listens
| September 3, 2018 She is a bird in song with whole consonants flying out of the cave of her tiny mouth, the tones airborne like a floating leaf. She hands me a block, and with it comes language not yet molded into comprehension, but so sweet, that I listen carefully like one does on a forest walk....
A Total Solar Eclipse Is Visible from Any Given Point on Earth Once Every 375 Years, on Average
| August 27, 2018 We'd gone to the lake to watch. We had the special glasses, and I toggled between gaping at the razor-precise disappearing of the sun and looking down at my children to make sure they both had their glasses properly affixed.
