Voodoo Love
I am a cliché — the hard-working administrative assistant who is in love with her boss. For months my friend, Celeste Pierre, who works in word processing, and I have been discussing different ways for my boss, Kip Townsend, to notice me beyond my regular role. Celeste feels a preternatural remedy is my only hope. She wants me to meet her Haitian grandmother, Maman, as she is called. Maman is a mambo, a priestess of voodoo. Celeste tells me voodoo is folk religion. I tell her I’m a lapsed Catholic, with few religious convictions left. I don’t believe in voodoo dolls. “Marie,” she...
Read MoreFalling in Love Again
“Never wanted to” – Marlene Dietrich You begin by believing women are chiffon pastels, floating on foam, soft petals yielding to softer centers. Naturally you compare them to roses. The shock of flesh is a grand surprise: heavy bodies wrestling. A bigger shock is the granite mind: that doorless cube where no one answers. These are really preparations for the throb of earth in your blood, gravity tugging at your shoes as you fall at the speed of life toward the truly astounding earth. You discover you actually want to fall: to yield and open layer on layer. Then women fade,...
Read MoreFeatured: Week of Sept. 24
In the Northeastern United States, where I live, the weather is wavering between warmth and coolness. But on many days, as this past weekend, one last burst of heat blooms, as summer takes a last stand. This week’s contributors celebrate the beauty of warm weather. Emily Strauss, in her poem, “Settling Into Outside,” explores the transformation brought by spending time outdoors. John Grey’s poem, “Train Through Nebraska,” depicts the scenery out a train traveling through the Midwestern U.S. Stephanie DeLusé, in her essay, “My Morning with a...
Read MoreMy Morning with a Tree
A day off from walking, I rise to greet the day and the palo brea tree in the front yard. Do you know this tree? Smooth green bark like a palo verde tree, but instead of needles there are soft little leaves, and when it blooms the yellow flowers run all along the branches. Lovely, and thorns aplenty. This tree is not yet the lawn-spanning shade canopy I envision it will become in its future, but it’s getting there. It has a big spirit, gently pressing its boundaries and expanding its comfort zone a little more each day. Eager and responsive, it grows a jumble of limbs going this way and...
Read MoreTrain Through Nebraska
Train whistle draws its inspiration from the trill of endless insects Summer night accordion, tin pipe, flute enough to float the blood from heart to head and back again. The heat is the most and the crickets are least, and through it all, the locomotive, stretched taut silver, strains against steel rail and contour and knock-kneed sound, to crush another mile beneath its wheels. From darkening berth, the night’s forensic, a shrillness here, a click-clack there, evidence gathered to implicate field and sleeper in the distance gained. Farmers wave. Children pedal. Russet hills just are in...
Read MoreSettling Into Outside
Close to the land at Carrizo Plains, California After several days you know Where to put every item for easy Access, you remember the feel Of air, sun, wind, cold all day And night, the lantern hums In that familiar way, your hair Smells of dust and smoke, Clothes turn dirty without notice The food doesn’t matter now You forget to check your watch Can’t remember the date or day Sleep at dark, rise at first light Sit anywhere, stop talking Listen to killdeer at sunset Meadowlark calls, coyotes At night on the hills, silence Field of stars, no moon Walk without light,...
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