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The Half-Life of Human Memory

Some health problems attack methodically — cancer, heart disease, the slow drain of the body’s vigor as it ages. But more worrisome are the unpredictable things that happen without warning, when hard luck and outside forces coauthor narratives of tragedy. There’s a reason I often walk the same route home. …

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Achromatopsia

Colors hiding in the fields. Having fled my eyes in a sudden mutiny. A revolution rare among visual glitches. City rendered sad, a cold faded etching. Egg yolks the color of cream. Blood stains uncarnadined. Startled birds white on a gray laurel hedge. Went to sleep with the reds and …

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Elegy with Steam

When I was sick with a head cold, my head full of pressure, my father would soak a washcloth in hot water, then ball it up, ring it out. He would open it above my head, then place it against my face like a second skin, the light around me …

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Tell Me the Secret of Your Great Strength

The morning after a man was elected who had, arguably, the worst head of hair in American presidential history, I began pulling out my own. I would watch the news or read the paper, and my hands would wander, fitfully, until they found my hairline, twirling a few strands experimentally …

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We Are the Ghosts in the Rafters, Murmuring like Doves

The child is below us, but we dare to whisper, knowing the rain drowns us out; it slaps the window, smearing the moonlight to a buttery bridge across the slick black asphalt of the street below. She’s heard us before, easing doors open with a coy, feline nudge to check …

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Best Wishes for a Speedy Recovery

I. When Donny was a boy, his aunt caught him taking a five-dollar bill from her purse. She grabbed his wrist and told him he had two choices: she could tell his mother, or she could take him to the church to confess to the priest. Donny chose the priest. …

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Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze (1956-2021)

Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze died on August 4, 2021. Her work as a dub poet and great performer is legendary. Less so (though no less deserving) is her turn in her later writing to a number of narrative, lyrical poems that celebrated what she called “the simple things of life.” Unabashedly …

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The Atomic Age

My mother’s old room, mostly emptied of furnishings, has one wall lined with cardboard boxes. A system of organization has arisen first from her sorting, then from mine after she moved into assisted living. Boxes with photos of freckled relatives from Oklahoma on my dad’s side are separated from boxes …

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[SPECULUM] ENVY

I was jealous of my brother’s race car bed and jealous of my neighbor’s swing set. In a memory, a house across the street is knocked down by a yellow construction vehicle and I watch from my uncle’s lap where we sit in the attic. He has a penis and …

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