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To Deserve
If you were to step inside Mary’s home, you would think to yourself that she is a person broken. Not that it was disorderly, not that it reeked of non-maintenance, not that there was rotting food and unclean clothes—but there might as well have been.
Reparated Tombstone
Weathered Army-store combat boots charging into the oblique night. Blind hands drag the monument loose off its footing, with a dull grind of stone on stone. Then the heaving. Fingers tucking under into the paste of dew and milled granite. The slab’s wet pressure on the chest. Those first feeling steps forward into the gloom.
Where the Wild Goose Goes
He figured he might not be able to fly like a goose, but he damned sure knew where the highway was. And one morning he would look over at the aging woman sleeping beside him and slip from her bed as quiet as a cat burglar. He’d pack his duffle, he’d take all the cash in the house, and he’d be down the road by sunrise, looking for something better, or at least something different, leaving nothing of himself behind save a few stray hairs and the imprint of his head on the pillow.
Black Light
In the morning, she woke to the smell of fried eggs and bacon grease. Mama was on her way to the cotton mill. They would talk when she got home. Ivy was not to set foot outside the house.
Buffalo Plaid
She wore the same dress they had given her for the funeral. Maybe it was bad luck to wear it when you visit someone in the hospital. The overheads bathed the hallway in soft light. While everyone spoke in hushed voices, her sneakers kept squawking on the vinyl floor. A man in baby-blue scrubs told her that Mr. Hutchinson was expecting her. He took the bouquet and observed that her backpack looked mighty heavy. She shrugged it away from him. He directed her to Hutchinson’s room. She glanced back and found him staring at her.
Afterlight
When the telephone rang later than usual, Nora thought it would be her son, Charley. He’d forgotten to take home the extra pizza when he left earlier. Maybe he’d want to come by for it after he finished jogging.
52 Pick-Up
Dad always said I didn’t have to pay him back for everything, but I knew that was a huge lie, the way that beautiful people wearing long wool coats say, “Sorry, no cash,” when I asked them if they want to see a card trick.
A Love Note
Our arrangement was simple enough. I was with Gloria the first and third weekends of the month; Ollie and Gloria were together the second and fourth weekends. Weeknights were infrequent and scheduled ad hoc.
The New House
In the old house, the swarms of flies / you sent clouded the bathroom mirror / and swam in the puddles of wine
Photo Shoot, Roseland Park Cemetery, July 1985
The photos arrived, tucked inside your letter with its paragraphs / of charm as preamble for the main point, dagger-honed, / that stabbed me by surprise. You’d made an effort
Van the Tree Man
When Tom Blake was a young insurance agent in downtown Cincinnati, he worked for his Uncle Walt at the Walt Blake Agency, a well-known but decrepit local fixture.
Hard Candy
In the manuscript a middle-aged woman (single, childless) / looks after her crotchety father. He has shot someone, / but not to death, or maybe he took the buckshot to the gut.
O is for Orangutan, C is for Cleopatra
In the span of fifty-five years, Grandma Clou had four or five husbands. Stories were swapped like trading cards. The plumber she married at sixteen; he was thirty-two. Then there was the second cousin she met at a BBQ.