My mother and I returned to the Tucson art museum because Rose Cabat’s daughter told us over the phone that the museum was selling Feelies not featured in the retrospective.
The wind in the west blows across the Sioux prairieland, bending the wheat stalks at their waists. Nelson Elling lies beneath the swaying stalks, and from where he’s sprawled the wheat fields are dusted in a purpling haze.
Who would have given a damn about me if not for that box?
As punishment for Prometheus’ gift of fire, the gods gave me to men. They gave me to men. I was a poisoned gift. But the importance of a poisoned gift is the venom it bears, not the gift. The box, not Pandora.
Martha Levinson lived with her two small dogs in a Victorian house, high on a hill in the Berkshires. She was long-divorced from her ex-husband and had two grown children, Claire and Philip, who lived in New York and Los Angeles. In her old age her almond eyes had become watery and caked with eyeliner, and she had resigned her chestnut hair to an eternally frizzy nest.
Dr. Michaels usually remembered to take off his white coat before he went into Allison’s room, and today was not an exception. He put it on one of the nicer hangers and made sure the name tag on his breast pocket was clearly visible when the closet door was opened.
Philadelphia, 1962. “Dirty beatnik,” he muttered under his breath. Maurice Povich sat with his roommate on the balcony outside his dorm at the University of Pennsylvania. It was the night before graduation, and Al decided to light up a joint. … Read More
Before the war, I often perched on the fence of the cow pasture to watch the trains go by. That was well before I was unable to stand the sound of trains. I had nothing else to do besides throwing rocks in the muddled Risle and memorizing geometry and morality lessons until everything mingled irremediably in my head. My only friend was Adam, though sometimes his cousin Anne, who was a year younger than we were—but just as sharp if not more—would tag along with us when we went down by the outskirts of town to smoke cigarettes and kick a ball back and forth.
