After the wartime regulations were published in the newspapers during World War II, my mother told my father in no uncertain terms that she had quite enough to do sewing blackout curtains for the rest of the windows in the house, so he could just paint our cellar windows black. I remember scraping holes in the paint so I could peek inside. At night, the wartime blackout was so pervasive I imagined that God had painted the sky black like our cellar windows, and then chipped away a bit of the paint here and there so He could spy on me through the twinkling hole-stars.
Genre: Nonfiction
Under the New Mexico Sky
It’s a hot June night in Farmington, New Mexico, just after last call at the Turnaround Bar. A 36-year-old Navajo woman named Betty Lee hangs up the pay phone at the 7-Eleven convenience store across the street. Frustrated and angry because her girlfriends have left her stranded, she has called just about everyone she can think of to beg for a ride back to her home in Shiprock.
Pedalling Forward
My neck burns, strained from looking straight ahead, so I let my chin fall; it kisses my chest. I groan and never want to look up again. My entire spine [More…]
Clippings From an Old Man’s Life
Birthday
(Hungarian countryside, 1945)
I sit close to the bobbing, chocolate landscape of the horses’ backs, their ears little tents way up ahead. Long tails dance to the roll of haunches, one swinging just a touch faster than the other, but there are magical moments of synchrony.
Behind the Wheel
Traveling west from Kandahar City into the Zharey district in July 2008, on desert bypass “routes,” knees smashing against the metal seat of the gunner’s nest across from me, I [More…]
Adult Onset Allergies
one night, i got home
and went to check my email
this was taking place back in the day when i was living on the edge, doing what they
call “online dating”
crazy, i know
no, it really was crazy
i mean
it got to the point where i was like, really?
as if i don’t meet enough psychotic people on any given day?