Poetry |
“Unquiet Walk”
Essay |
“The Past Tense of the Census”
“There were heads to count, assessment questions, and not every house, she soon learned, was welcoming. House trailers were rare and always alone …”
Poetry |
“Mere Humans”
Poetry |
“Rope Trick”
Poetry |
“The Ballad of Gaol” and “Lorca”
Essay |
“Recognition”
“An asylum, one day, was identified from our car. My mother, tired of my ‘acting a fool,’ said, ‘A wing is reserved there for children’ …”
Essay |
“The Silence of the Wasps”
“The morning of my hospital appointment, I research the humours in medieval medicine – black bile, blood, phlegm and yellow bile. Yellow bile is choleric, inciting anger, irritability, envy and jealousy.”
Fiction |
“How They Died”
“Those years of bitterness and rage began with a hairline fracture in her tailbone. Until then, she had been known as a cheerful person; afterwards … whenever someone asked her how she was doing she would furiously reply: ‘My ass hurts!’”
Fiction |
“we buried mom in the cocktail shaker”
“We certainly weren’t going to shell out for a casket. Don’t pay good money for that shit, she would have said. So, while Mom shook down to ash, I looked for urns between crying shifts.”