A Matter of Being
Hair “Mastectomy?” Joe, my husband of forty-four years, says robotically. Dr. Robeson, the oncologist, describes to Joe how my breast cancer works, and I watch as Joe tries to uphold his Baptist deacon stature. I remember the day he said, “I do,” there was a similar wave of stiff astonishment …
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Birdboy
After you were made, the Earth requested your mother’s body. Your father said, “She never heard you cry twice”—and, though this never fell from his mouth, you could hear it clearly in the silence that followed—”You killed her. You took her from me.” Maybe it is why he named you …
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Architects, Please Try Harder
Build more homes that resemble ships. Put little doors in the backs of rooms, with tiny steps that lead into hidden chambers four or five feet below deck. Remember the salt box, the A-frame, and the foursquare, the disappearing vessels of our dreaming. Chair rails might establish a room’s horizons, …
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Postcards from Ursula
Ursula is the name given to the largest Customs and Border Patrol processing and detention center. It is located in McAllen, Texas; its conditions have been compared to torture facitilies by physicians and social workers. Their Eyes. I’m haunted by their eyes. —Toby Gialluca, Lawyer my body in the …
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On Empire
The Roman sarcophagus shows Miriam, with her spangled tambourine,1 as she crosses the dead sea, women dancing as coral waves spread, their escape from Pharaoh captured in alabaster stone & gypsum red – will we too survive, our lungs flooded, the indifferent machine? & will we reach the other side? …
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The Ruins on Bourbon and Condé
In 1905, my great-grandfather, Ferdinand Bellande, built a two-story colonial-style house in southern Haiti on the corner of Rues Bourbon and Condé in Jacmel’s Bel-Air neighborhood. With its louvered shutters and high ceilings, the architecture was typical of former French colonies in the Caribbean. He and my great-grandmother raised nine …
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Curvilinear
is the word for the way my brain thinks is the opposite of a line is the roundabout way with a scenic view so forgive me if I wander off and lose the task at hand. Now there’s a black butterfly on the late summer hydrangeas that before this spring …
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A Girl Walks Through a Mirror
On the last day of the shoot, she appears in just one scene, which might more accurately be referred to as a transition—a CGI bridge between reality and the Shapeshifter’s Lair, as the script describes it. Her role in this scene is considered central, for her character (a peculiar girl …
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A Girl Never Dies
It might be more appropriate to say that she dies a million times—each time in a different way or at a different point in her life. When she first realizes this is happening, she’s fifteen years old, a sophomore in high school, walking home with her best friend Vanessa after …
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Pretty Knotte
This evening I had a conversation with the editor—I will call her Jan—of a small but reasonably prestigious literary journal on the West Coast. At the time of this writing, I’m just a few months past my fiftieth birthday. A little Googling leads me to believe that Jan is in …
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