March 1, 2021
The Peace Walls
On a street where Protestants and Catholics once torched each other’s houses a generation ago, Noel and Danny — men who fought on opposite sides of the bloody Troubles — look each other straight […]
January 4, 2021
Two Eyes, a Nose, and a Mouth
And a mouth French horn At the end of grade six, the kids who signed up for band gathered in the school gym to select our instruments. The girls asked […]
January 4, 2021
Learning to Be a Panda
My pregnancy tracking app sends alerts every morning, guiding me through what I’m supposed to be experiencing. Now’s about the time to stop wearing high heels, it says. I frown […]
November 1, 2020
The Burning Bush
. . . I learned They suffer here who sinned in carnal things — Their reason mastered by desire, suborned. — Dante, Inferno, Canto V Nora Serafini had a toy cash register […]
November 1, 2020
Excerpts from
On Eighth Avenue, a young man stumbles toward me, something dark and feathered bundled in his arms. He looks up — red eyes, distillery breath: “You know anything about pigeons?” “No,” I […]
November 1, 2020
Stay
An excerpt from Crossing Black Water: My Mother’s Search for Home from Lahore to New York On the tarmac of an airport in New Delhi, in the shadow of a […]
November 1, 2020
From “Unaccompanied Minor”
Not the crime, but the getaway, what I remember. Running out of the living room, through the center foyer, out the kitchen door, then throwing myself on the cold marble […]
July 1, 2020
Mark Strand
At the time of his death at the age of eighty on November 29, 2014, Mark Strand had left an indelible stamp on American letters. He had served as United […]
July 1, 2020
Just Like Johnny Cash
Hold a book long enough and it will remember you, I promise. The wetness of your breath and the oils from your fingers will comingle over time with the ferric […]
January 2, 2020
The Healing Stone of Mountain Creek
The path to Richard Howard’s house is more tunnel than road. Shag-bark hickory and black oak walls curve to leaf ceilings, shielding red-dirt traffic lanes below. The forest is thick, […]
January 2, 2020
The Last Soviet Poet
Twenty years ago, I was lost again in Moscow, circling identical white multistory apartment blocks in a panic, trying to find the legendary avant-garde poet Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov. I was […]
November 2, 2019
#NoDAPL Protest, North Dakota
Someday (somewhere) that pipe will leak. — Ron His Horse Is Thunder, Standing Rock Sioux Reservation Room on My Dance Card On Sunday, October 9, 2016, I drove to North Dakota […]