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When I rolled up to the light on 96th and the River, the old man waited, rag in hand, and bent hard over the windshield. Did my father ever treat my ass with the care this stranger bestows? He blows a kiss on it and strokes it with the corner of his shirt. I lean on the horn and holler: I have places to go–with reservations, in fancy restaurants, with […]

Hit from Behind For Robin I do not know the torque required to break a human bone or the geometry of angles a body absorbs before it bends if force that snaps a back or severs a spine is an equation or probability. When I whined about my clutter, laundry overflowing its baskets the spillage of my wasteful self spoiling in crispers and cabinets, I was not thinking of collision, […]

The black cat she named after a stiff Russian drink, and slept on my childhood bed, crawls out from under some orbit, neither of us can remember the exact shade of red lipstick she was always wiping clean. * If given the gift of another question I would choose one that could unpack like nesting dolls. * I would ask again about my birth story, how I almost arrived in […]

Curious that I can’t laugh at myself without also crying a little. The foible that generates the laugh was once a venerated bias, social illusion I had clung to, action I knew was significant, reciprocal acceptance of flaw, a fairy tale taught early to me, mind hair that smarted when tweezed out. And how naked I felt just after, clutching for another fig leaf to better hide my uncertainty, to […]