I phone home daily to see if there’s any improvement, that swelling has thinned, that the pain is ethereal, that pill bottles are shaken in a celebratory song. there is hope, but I gave up a job across the country because duties of parent and child have reversed Now I use words, questions, laughter to […]
His hands hot pink rheumatoid balloons float to carroty plastic containers: 1, 2, 3, 4 filled with charcoal, chartreuse, cinnamon, chamomile bubbles of hope. Bloated fingers clumsily grip pill bottles, dump a few globes onto the counter and sweep the proper mound into a reddened palm, slowly growing toward the mouth and slipping down the […]
In the early afternoon while they liein bed the furnaceturns on.Somewhere in her housea floor-board creaks. I love . . . when you touch me here, she says, I want to touch you there every night, he asserts. Their fingers weave, unweave, and slideaway and away over skin and skin. We could move away. Another […]
Germany 1945. Two sisters pick soft yellow chamomile On an open birdsong-filled hill Chamomile scents plummet onto yellow fingers Sunlight shoots down from above. Their foreheads glisten with beads of sweat. The girls run, Tumble down the hills Laughing, digging, tossing flowers Into the air where Two buzzing dots Mark the sky. The older sister […]
I drive my Chev ¾ ton 4×4 through ruts on a muddy cutline and at the bottom of a hill there’s a bit of a swamp so Pal says, it can’t be deep; just go on through, so I say yeah and I giver and we hit the water and it’s deep and we jostle […]
