Going through my shelves before the concert and after the origami balloons, offering new books to a friend. "This is what Carole Maso will do to you," I warn him, reading aloud: I was hoping to tame my terror with sex or language. He says mm, nods. I tell him that the repetition means something different every single time. He nods and I can ( Read more... )

Little Essay on Form
by Stephen Dunn
We build the corral as we reinvent the horse.

*

First day of "The Lyric Essay," Brenda Miller assigns the class What I did on my summer vacation -- in five lines of three words each. This is more interesting than you might expect, and I think this class might be very good for my brain ( Read more... )

Monday means margaritas, means limes, means more tequila than we probably should have bought, let alone consumed. Means let's lock all the boys outside and dance in here where they can't see us mostly, just a little. It's better when it's just the girls, even if we might be encouraging objectification a little, just a little, just maybe ( Read more... )

Let's start with a picture of a girl in her new place, on the back steps so high up, looking at the water over and in between pointed houses, eating a sharp green apple from someone else's farm. Later she'll be tripping over boxes and trying to figure out how to fit the wicker dome of a papasan chair into a car that is not really that large, then ( Read more... )

Here's the thing about Mondays. They are not universally bad. They are, in fact, not universally anything. Sometimes you can spend Mondays running around San Francisco with your friends. Or sometimes you can spend Mondays letting down your best friend, reciting numbers over the telephone, and going to the gynecologist. The bad news is that I'm ( Read more... )

Here's what I'll keep. How the father's face mirrors his child's, gasping in joy behind the camera, squatting to catch mother and child in digital. Grace says "he's thinking 'Why did she marry me? How could I be so lucky?'" The oldfamiliar hellos, even though he's in San Francisco. "Don't chain smoke," I tell him. "What?"--"I said don't chain ( Read more... )

I'm going to be living on Pine street with two sisters named Matia and Aurora who watch the all girl Christian house next door for entertainment, consistently call themselves women instead of girls, and offered me plums from their family's farm immediately upon introductions. M warns me, drinking tea on the strip of lawn, that she is sometimes ( Read more... )

Here's the story as it was told to me ( Read more... )

Yesterday I bought a very beautiful red Volvo, one year older than me, named Ruby (she is closer to the color of a garnet, but to change names can be very disturbing). This morning I roll out of bed, put on sandals and head out to run some errands. Shining sun, cranking down the window, and the Pixies come out of the stereo and suddenly I ( Read more... )

done recently ( Read more... )