This is How I Used to Break
When I was twelve, my mother came home early from work one day and caught me sitting on the pantry floor, stuffing my face. Our house rule was I had to ask for food, but at school lunch, Josie—the mean girl in 7D—shouted that my fish sandwich was gross. Embarrassed, …
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Correspondence
Dear cottage: my grandparents dwell in you, bordered by deep beech, spruce, and fir. Standing on your balcony overflowing pink and white verbena, they watch me walk up the gravel path. I’ve fetched milk, still warm, from the dairy down the road. Can you smell the brook where minnows glint …
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Pine on the Penobscot
Every spring, the drive from the interiors: Eastern whites cut off and floating toward the head of tide— the rigging of empire— hires aligning the trunks to glide through the deep runs, making for great works and the wide boom. It’s hard to be native and useful; hard to be …
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On the Recovery of Canis Familiaris from Sputnik 2, 1957
Before the launch, the mission scientist bathed her, dabbed her with alcohol and bruises of iodine. He kissed her nose. She had played with his children. In photographs, the hatch is open and she is posed, or is posing, one ear folded, the other heavenward. At launch, the saucer-sized porthole fogged with her panting. …
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The Catholic Anarchist
I had lost everything, or put an- Other way, I didn’t believe a thing. I was an adrift vessel, an at-risk Young person without a moral compass, And I’d just pawned my binoculars at A shop on 14th Street, so I walked down First Street near First Avenue in early …
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to whom it may concern:
My daughter will not be in school today. Please excuse my daughter’s absence from class today because she will be I am not well she is not well sick. Please excuse my daughter from class today because she is sick. I will be taking her to the doctor. keeping her home. …
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a pedagogy for lesser bodies
My husband kicks our dachshund puppy out the back door because she has peed a quarter size puddle on the living room carpet. At less than a few months old, this mishap was to be expected. Nevertheless, he rustled her to the back door, scooped her up with his foot, …
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New Vows
That day, the sun rose into the morning like honeycomb sliding off a hot knife, filling the haze with a buttery, oneiric glow. We ran down the hill, eager and full, words heavy and sweet spilling out of our mouths. Time slipped through our damp fingers like opalescent minnows in …
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Lightning
It is evening. Summer. A thin blue settles across my grandparents’ house. No lamps are switched on yet. Everyone is visiting out back where the cicadas have begun sawing when a phone rings loudly into the muffled dusk. Either Dad answers or someone else picks up and hands him the …
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Between Them
MacArthur The train squeals to a stop as it nears the station. A dozen passengers exit, buds in ears and cellphones in hands. My mother, father, and I enter, their tickets in my hand. They head straight for the seats reserved for the elderly and infirm, two words that make …
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