The alcohol slips through my mouth, slides down the column of my spine and into my legs like a shiver.  My hands go loose as I type.  Sips of drink pulse through my body like lightening bugs in the night until I am hypnotized and I no longer remember to count calories.  Smiling at my body in the mirror, I undress.  The clothes faint into a heap on ( Read more... )

I never expected to stand beneath the tin belly of the carport still pregnant with the heat of day (as the lizards dart in and out of the bushes like embroidery needles) and crave the stained glass sunset of Tucson with such force.
The clouds licked raw with color move me.
Every day this place feels more like home.

 My mother does not live in our post-modern, pluralistic world, but inhabits an ontological, inherent wonderland.  Everything she sees is endowed with definitive meaning.  Apples, snakes, and ribs are not a subjective experience, but heavy with god-bestowed symbolism.  She has impregnated her 46 years of suffering with rich explanations and ( Read more... )

Dreaming of your Sistine chapel eyes
wakes me in the morning
before the sun light falls through the blinds
and faints onto the carpet.

Hymns of you leave me hollow and humming
as i dress for the new day
beneath a pale yellow sky.

I pulled down the shade and let my eyes adjust from the hard light of open sky to the darkness of row 24, seat A of the Boeing 737. The sun ignored my protest and slipped underneath the bottom of the shutter to fall in a single fine line across my lap.  The day the U.S. dropped the bomb on Hiroshima, the weather was very much like this--clear skies ( Read more... )

My mother prays to be afflicted with stigmata. This is not a metaphor. She begs God to open up holes in her palms so that she will bleed hot blood onto everything she touches. She believes this would be a blessing, the holy of holies.
She says that if she were nailed to cross, it would give her no room to sin. She is suspicious of happiness and ( Read more... )

Anorexia makes you choose between your mind and your body. There is no compromising, no begging or bartering.
We all have our priorities. And we all have to sleep at night. So we make our choices, no matter how awful they may be.

            I told the woman on the train that I was Jewish. She was hulking, wearing a mumu in carnation pink; a garment more like a summer picnic cloth than a shirt. She thrust a yellow rosary into my hands, told me I could use it anyway, even as I fingered the Star of David you put around my neck the night before. Her eyebrows drawn together in ( Read more... )

for love is a mighty thing.

I read Hemingway on the red couch in the far right corner of his apartment as the Arizona sunlight, sliced into ribbons, laid itself silently across my legs ( Read more... )