The message comes toward the end of a long Saint Joan run, my daughter’s final performance in the title role— when we get back late that night the light on our machine flashes like a Broadway Marquee and my brother…
The thin girl burns calories lifting hangers from the shopping rack, hungry as anyone for a bargain. She is not obsessed with her waist or the way her stomach laces her hips together like a rope bridge bent beneath the…
Fishing without a fishing pole is feeling vibration and tug is like playing a harp with the fingers rather than the nails feel the strings as they tighten, loosen feel the nibble at the other end and tug on the…
Life begins in water. Here, on the gravel beach, where the shifting tides rock clattering pebbles forward and back in their arms, and the murmuring sea whispers lullabies in our ears, I watched you. You were silver and grey like…
Hand tempera paintings of New York City sewer systems, an unripe plum, mass of potential cells, bundled and bursting to expand, mitosis ready, to form organs and limbs. Paintings of flowers, and empty soil beds swollen breasts, remembering peri-bottles, the…
Like the memory deepest hidden, it drives you The you you can’t put down make sleep smother under logic The pilot light inside burning away the shapes and masks that sell you this story– a spinning web of deja vus…
transfer, held damply in her hand, the snow melting where her cap (nearly) met her coat, her scarf left where (behind), shed like the skin of a snake, useless as an escape tool, however jauntily it was wrapped, the pantone…
Hearing your heart beat Quick, definite, determined Inside of me The first time I knew instantly That you would be My moon child, My daughter For your room I bought A fairy Lounging on a Crescent moon You came At…
Between Greenwich and Cambridge, Cambridge to Arlington The brightly lit hills rise. Reds and yellows smart the eyes. She’s bored but tuned in, marking time with teen divas Even behind my sunglasses, the color rends. There are fields still as…
Kylemore Abbey, home of the Benedictine Order of Nuns is situated on the picturesque west coast of Ireland. The nuns who reside here take a vow of silence and live quiet, peaceful lives in an enormous castle. The pristine acres…
When polishing sterling silver, Use a soft cream and a damp cloth Lest you scratch the shiny surface Of what you never meant to mar. A mother of four children, Jane Blanchard divides her time between Augusta and St.…
You have trained your restless haunches for eight months now, within me, growing by skull and brow, ribs and toes—simple kicks and I contain the world. An oak tree’s tangled loin inhales, a scratch of breath drawn over bark and…