Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
In middle school, our hygiene teacher Mrs. Miller warned the girls about rogue sperm: they infest all the swimming pools and ponds, they inhabit the shower (don’t take one after your brother), they live on soap and don’t give up. I felt lucky to be an only child. Getting birth control in a popup clinic,…
Waiting for the Sun in Upstate New York, smeared with Criscoand a silver sun catcher unfolded across my chest,I think I have it all figured out.I’m 17 and plan to have a big house like Lisa:three or four bathrooms stockedwith thick peach Ralph Lauren towels.The rest, of course, is a blur—my career, family—the howmoney would hit my bank part. I knew I wouldn’t smell like…
Faded, threadbare, my earliest memories are stitched together by the whir and click of my grandmother’s Singer 66. She kept me clothed—through the corn-silk heat of Iowa summers to the snow-blind winters with ruptured water pipes. She followed patterns she bought at the Ben Franklin, but also those handed down. Afternoons, I’d wake from my nap to that chugging sound, follow it down the hall…
That’s how the cornin its summer song of silk and husk, its tassels waving across the field, calling to rat and raven; how my mother, before she lost her heartand lungs; how my brother-in-law, before he lost his brainand tongue, his hulking body swayingas I came into the kitchen and said Stay strong; before his tumor grew back with teeth and claws, stealinghis thoughts; how…
Image: Photo by Melani Sosa, via Unsplash.