If… Dog… Rabbit…
(for John) The ‘if’ sets up the futile ground of possibility while the ‘only’ that’s implied underlines the ruefulness of being human, of being a mother, of having seen too much of what’s disguised as what is wanted. Sometimes it is the dog that is missing, or the dog could save the day, or the dog chases after the rabbit yipping its high-pitched joy only to return winded with a slobbery grin. The only answer to “if only.” When the idiom changes to if…son…motorcycle and the only becomes if only he had not inherited my need for speed, my need to risk everything to...
Read MoreMultiplication
Twice a week, I have almost the same conversation with the greengrocer. “Beautiful lady!” he says. “What can I do for you today?” “Darling greengrocer!” I reply. “I need a bunch of five or six small bananas; a kilogram of green apples – not too green, though; a head of broccoli and a kilogram of tomatoes.” “I’ve got some pomegranates today,” he adds. He might just as easily mention persimmons, or fresh figs, or champagne grapes, whatever is in season. “They won’t last long.” “And two pomegranates,” I tell him, because it may be my only chance to have a...
Read MoreChoking Up
I’m folding Sam’s undershirts upon the curve of my belly when my mother sends me a text to come to the nursery. My husband tends to sleep late before rushing off to work, so I tiptoe down the hall. “He smells a little sick,” says Mom. “Know what I mean?” She’s rocking Sam in the glider, smoothing the cowlicks matted to his scalp. I sniff purposefully, trying to grip the air with my nostril hairs. “Yes,” I lie. Sam’s cheeks are two bright circles of red, as though he’s dabbed them with rouge. He coughs, then mumbles into my mother’s shoulder, “Cook! Cook!” She has...
Read MoreMother Psalm 3
(a psalm of anticipation) Raise your legs, then let them fall again and again as though you knew turning over is just a twist and roll away. Do you remember somersaults in the warm recesses of the womb, suspended weightless like an astronaut on his tether? Sometimes you kick for long minutes without stopping, now as then, though the sensation is lost to me except in the dreams I visit between feedings. A few warm days and suddenly the icebound troughs of winter are as implausible as pregnancy. The birches go first, and the willows a haze of green and gold on the verge of...
Read MoreNature’s New Generation
The young lady delivers her first child but continues to have fits of cramps, and the doctor says, “I see something else.” He grips the forceps to extract the emerging object from the lady’s body. “Is it another baby?” she says. “What is it?” Perspiration coats her rosy face. But the confounded doctor doesn’t answer. He struggles with the emerging object. The young lady screams; she grips the hospital bed sheets. He pulls out the object — what on earth? It’s a square object covered in thick plastic, which the doctor has...
Read MoreNymph in the Bathtub
The photo jumps out at me from the pile of vintage photos that wind a trail back through my family on my mother’s side. I recognize the image and the person in it. I’ve seen another copy of the photo, framed, hanging on the walls of two different bathrooms in two of the houses my mother has lived in over the past ten years. I know the black-and-white toddler is Mom. She’s standing naked in a bathtub with her backside to the camera. Her head is turned to the right and slightly cocked over her shoulder. She wipes the edge of the tub with a rag. It looks like all the water has been...
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