Prose, Poetry, and Art since 1956
When I teach, I have students read to the class about a significant event in their lives. One young woman said she didn’t mind being locked in the cellar with her older brothers, but she didn’t think it was fair they had to share one plate of bread and milk. Her brothers were bigger. The class was silent and I rushed in to say something…
I’m the type to go unseen in the world. I’m the milk of women. —Ellen Welcker Once while boarding a train Marilyn Monroe turned to a friend and said Do you want to see me turn it on? She didn’t change clothes, but suddenly autograph-seekers swarmed over her blue light. Sometimes it’s like that—deciding to be wanted. Wanting to be watched. A secret sonar sent…
In the recent documentary, My Beautiful Broken Brain, a thirty-four-year-old woman in London records her recovery from a traumatic brain injury (TBI) following a massive stroke. While watching, I couldn’t help but relive my own experiences surviving a TBI, and the years following that catastrophic event. At first, I thought: I’m so lucky that my injury wasn’t so severe. Yet as the film progressed, and I…
Image: Scott Web, Public Domain CC0 Image
Two Mice of Ivory The year my father set adrift, the levee burst, my family’s belongings blew out all the windows and doors— making clear who held the foundation, close-fisted and sturdy— and nobody cared to clear up the debris, least of all my mother; who, instead, called forth the buzzards to graze on the heirlooms, leaving me to imagine a past wherein the birds…