In his wheelchair, laborious and alone, he fought his way out there - wheelchair, ugly feeble word, embarrassing. So we called it The Chair like capital punishment, that twist always of bitter morbidity as he decayed and decayed inside, as he palsied and loosened like someone cursed to unravel back towards infanthood.
Read MoreWhen the first ship appears, it is a skyscraper eased down, steel oranged by rust and sunset. A low burn on the horizon. Not yet time for stars. The water between the two Great Lakes still, marinating. You must know this before I go on.
Read MoreAfter my grandfather’s memorial service in Arizona, in the high-ceilinged, dark-stoned, weighty kitchen of a vacation rental, my nurse practitioner cousin cuts a cyst three times the size of a bb from the top right portion of my head. She injects lidocaine through a twenty-five-gauge needle attached to a syringe into my scalp to dull the pain of the excision. A part of me wishes she wouldn’t.
Read MoreNeoclassic bones crumble. The 18th Century is propped by scaffolding along South Harbour yet visible under sheets of plastic. I’m struck by the stench of feces outside Hotel Kämp. Cracking pipes? I squint my vulture eyes: tourists swarm the Esplanadi for another free concert.
Read MoreMy mother’s first pregnancy was a turbulent one. Her body waged war on the clump of cells that was determined to be me. Though I eventually emerged unscathed, the umbilical cord was wrapped so tightly around my neck that I was nearly snuffed out before the doctors could even pronounce me female.
Read MoreWhen I was young I couldn’t tolerate mistakes. I would get upset over errors, over any wrong answer. I didn’t know the difference between good and right. My teacher in Japan was concerned enough to ask my parents how strict they were at home. Do you allow mistakes, he asked. Of course, they answered.
Read MoreFirst, forget the put-on bravery, the way you spoke of it freely, telling anyone who cared to listen and then, once you tired them out, telling those didn't care. How afterwards you bought a shirt with I HAD AN ABORTION in black block letters across the chest and wore it just to see who you could turn uneasy.
Read MoreI've spent a lot of time ten stories up. Nine hours a day, five days a week, for the past two and a half years. I work up here. I sit by the window. My company is a small marketing agency that sells hammocks and beard oil and, sometimes, US presidential candidates. There are snacks in the cupboards. Free beer on tap. One of the first things we noticed when we moved in was that the windows opened.
Read MoreFirst, forget your mother. Forget the childhood breakfasts of soft-boiled eggs pooled like yellow mucus in the bottom of a cracked coffee cup. Forget that you had to eat it all, even the undercooked white that dangled from your spoon like a rope of snot.
Read More“But then, it wouldn’t be you,” he finishes, his voice softer. His eyes are no longer on me, but looking out ahead of him, as if he’s seeing her, the me that isn’t me. And I wonder what I, she, looks like.
Read MoreThere are voices outside the window, real ones this time, and close by. I shrink in the dark room, contract until there’s nothing left of me but the sheen of an eye peering through the smoke-yellowed blinds. Brownish street light steals through the slats, striping the floor around me like bars.
Read MoreImparting white hairs, on Grandmother’s cheek, twenty years ago. And what’s more, a tiny coalition of light hairs—faint hairs—fragile hairs—mere shadows of hairs— gracing my lips and temples now. I suggest to you: me before a mirror, fingering their most fine and present texture. I say: I know, I insist, I attest. I have inherited. The hairs are my own.
Read MoreMy father is standing over the toilet in a rage. He’s in the bathroom at the top of the stairs, holding a wet plunger, watching the bowl swirl empty then slowly refill. Between flushes and plunges, water drips onto the discolored aubergine cut-pile nylon that carpets every inch of our suburban house, including all four bathrooms.
Read MoreOn a recent visit to my mother’s, I sprawled in T-shirt and shorts in the front yard of her house, relishing the California sunshine. As I angled my head for the best late afternoon rays, my mother, sitting in the shade behind me, disturbed the heavy air and our customary silence with a Eureka sort of shriek. “You sure have a lot of gray hair!”
Read MoreDuring my first morning therapy session in the psych ward, about sixteen of us sat around a kids’ table that only came up to my knees. “Everyone takes a turn,” Rick, the psychologist, told us. “Tell us how you’re feeling this morning—and you can’t say ‘tired.’”
Read MoreMother never told me what would happen with my body. My period started when I was eleven, when we lived in Guadalajara. I thought it was my fault. She found the bloodied clothes wadded in the back of the dresser, sighed and said, go ask your sister where the supplies are.
Read MoreIt won’t be home any longer, that tub of iron and porcelain, perched on bricks, and the grey blue stone that we laid down ourselves with paste and effort and hope. The children bathe with lavender and soap, boats too, plastic cups, little men with overalls, a tiny brush for their fingers I bought at a market in a city I don’t remember.
Read MoreI arrive on the island on November 15, 2012, returning to a place I have never set foot. My first stop in Havana is Plaza de la Revolución. Steely outlines of Che Guevara’s and Camilo Cienfuegos’ facades loom.
Read MoreI see us standing on a street corner, bright sun, hidden in plain sight, and I see my hand reach for his—and the hesitation before he allows me to turn his palm upward—and right there, where anyone might see, I draw an X upon him.
Read MoreWal-Mart on a Sunday night is swollen and hungry and loud, but let us ignore the sadness so we don’t break and get toed under the bottom shelf, or chucked in a cart and rolled to clearance to soften like pumpkins in November. Forgive the cheap imports and foodstuff and low wages and death of independent business. Please. We can’t take it.
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