Costumes for a Different Woman "The dresses in my closet are costumes for a different woman, though I hide myself in their silky textures. The man asleep in my bed knows me best in the dark." Linda Pastan  He grows smaller. Somehow he makes this old house feel draftier, like we live in a bank... Continue Reading →

At Auction Mrs. Breton’s third-grade class dealt in teeth. Mostly incisors, but canines were coveted most. No one took a shine to molars except Milly. She said they were smoothest, like plaque-covered pearls. The teeth were kept in pencil cases, swapped in calculated exchanges, polished with eyeglasses cloths, and used to practice subtraction. Some kids... Continue Reading →

Limits of the Flesh  On fine afternoons, where the sun slips just right through the trees, I imagine being  smashed beneath some dense, massive object. It’s happened, you know. Not to me yet, but to others: in a warehouse where the lift fork slipped, a dockyard where the pulley gave. I make fourteen dollars an hour saying,... Continue Reading →

Overturned I blame the gallows. I’d wanted to see them ever since I saw that movie and figured it would make a good stop on the drive from Atlanta to Oklahoma City. I was going home for Thanksgiving but also for my Aunt’s funeral—an imperious woman who crocheted tiny pink and blue hats for preemies... Continue Reading →

Collateral Instead of exchanging actual gifts, we wrote poems about trees.  The metaphors extended like plastic bags about to drop: his tree was naked and praiseworthy and obviously my body in the cold interior of his car; mine was bending under ice in a cemetery I loved, where he decided he loved to park his... Continue Reading →