Blog : Beautiful-Things
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.
Away and Away, Then To: A Memoir
| August 20, 2018 The placenta blocked my exit. I was lifted from my mother just in time. London, 1968—bound for my father's USA. The month between Martin and Bobby; I imagine everyone sad.
In Answer to Fire
| August 13, 2018 For a long time, we could not go back. But once we were done averting our eyes, once we had mourned and banished all smoldering thoughts about the tribe of blackened trees replacing the known world for now and another season, and the last long fingers of smoke were ushered out by wind, a ticking began....
Walking
| August 6, 2018 I do not want to be naked. The thought consumes me to the point of obsession. As we crunch across the luminous blue-gray glacier, as we delicately spear a rack of the best lamb I've ever had in my life, as we drive for hours in the liquid darkness searching for the northern lights, my mind churns over scenarios....
Visitation (rerun)
| July 30, 2018 On the porch, under a Blood Moon, our fire is dying down, so we wear wool blankets over our shoulders. We're drinking cider warmed in a pan on the stove, splashed into mugs with whiskey....
Interruptions (rerun)
| July 23, 2018 Seek stillness. Close your eyes, relax in the lotus position, and breathe deeply. But hold on tight. Search every corner of the cosmos and you find only a universe in motion....
Waiting for Owls (rerun)
| July 16, 2018 Evening returns to the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the land cools. Day follows the sun across the valley floor and up into the mountains in the west. Birds settle down for the night.
The Sweetness of Figs
| July 9, 2018 I am at home here like I have not been anywhere else in my life. Home in the heat of dripping fig trees, their treacle tears that drop-by-drop onto the dry ground, the sour smell of wine in the air....
Excalibur
| July 2, 2018 We sprinted by the worn house with the closed blinds that reeked of pot and who knows what else. I gave the leash a short tug and we slowed to a walk again....
