Fagends at the Whitney
Claes Oldenburg’s Giant Fagends (1967) looms like a monument to all our beautiful ruins. The urethane foam cigarettes sprawl across their stark white ashtray—each one as big as my father’s forearm when he lay in the hospital bed, tubes snaking from his collapsed lungs. I stand here thinking how …
Read More
A Spectrum is a Ray of Light
Question 1: Is it difficult for you to understand what people are feeling just by observing facial expressions? There’s a blind spot on Reigerts Road, a dead zone at the peak of a high-sloping hill where two cars traveling in opposite directions cannot see if a stray vehicle …
Read More
The Shed
When I was a girl, I was enthralled with butterflies. Their stately names—monarch, viceroy, painted lady—each sounded to me more like royalty than biology. I wished sometimes I could become one, unfurl kaleidoscope wings and float off into some other world, light as breath. And so I spent …
Read More
Lift
Two scooter girls in Easter-egg helmets kneel at a suspension bridge edge. Shoulder to shoulder, they spin combination locks, racing to feel the release. Below, a shirtless boy wades into the river. His mother, on a boulder, reaches out. A swallow darts by. Concrete shifts. Cables grind rust into …
Read MoreA Traveler’s Guide to Goodbyes
Vow #1: No more getting high. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I’ll say it until it sticks. Last time, it was a resolution. Everyone was making them. A month, I could do a month. One week passed. I’d had a rough day, and I …
Read More
Frittatas
In the morning, I made two, seven eggs in each. My husband came into the kitchen just as I was whisking the second batch, and he told me that one of the buffy hens had gotten herself on top of the little black and white, that the two of them …
Read More
The Organ
We’re driving to Newburg for a carburetor part, my father quiet as usual. I’m thankful to get out of the house. My mother, in her threadbare nightgown and worn pink toenails, shoving the vacuum around, grumbling about being a martyr, while the four of us kids deep in sofa …
Read More
How To Get Dressed
cw: anxiety and sensory dysregulation Before you became a dress hanging in E’s closet, you were born on a conveyor belt. You watched identical kin as they disappeared down the line and wondered how they came to be. They were you, but not. Needles poked your neck, round and round, …
Read More
Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
An elderly Vietnamese man goes through our trash daily. No gloves, no concerns. He walks up our driveway, opens the lid of the big, blue recycling bin, and makes me feel bad for discarding what is valuable. I’ve seen him on and off over the five years since we …
Read More