A Brief History of Swans
We frighten away boyfriends, lovers, strangers, and we do not mind, because we are together: together, we are glorious.
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Posts Tagged: family
A Zealot and a Poet
I like to imagine him out there on his beast of burden, vast grey country on all sides and a book of poetry open in his hand. It is a romantic image and, when I think only of it, I can almost forget why he was there.
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Displays of Affection
I’m a reluctant decorator. Maybe it’s because I’m really a poet, or maybe because I’m a slob. Either way, despite a life long fascination with my own personal mise en scenes I’ve tried never to let the professional impulse sink its fangs too deep.
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Round Trip
There was so much love in his body, and though he lost his shape, lost so much weight, near the end of his life, he still cried when he watched the Bulgarian Olympians march down the Athens stadium, cried when Bulgarian music came on the international radio.
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Consider the Bird
I remember the night he told me about the white bird there was a Styrofoam cup with a bendable straw and water in one hand, and a Bayer pill in a medicine cup. Where was everyone else? I don’t remember.
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The Ghosts in Our Blood
The medium sat down on the twenty-year old loveseat in my living room. She settled in like an old friend, without looking around, without working to read the weight of my eyelids, the twitch of my mouth.
...moreA Memorandum of Ghosts
Outside my window in Chicago it is snowing. I am overlooking a back yard that looks like a New England forest. Pine trees and garden bridges, amber soil and dirty snow. Snow that only looks that way after a January rain.
When Barbara Jean Was Missing
“You are the closest thing I have to a mother,” she said. My mother said this to me, her oldest daughter,
me, the only one of her four children unlikely to give her grandchildren. I am forty. I am single. I never wanted to be anyone’s mother.
The Rumpus Original Combo with Justin Torres
Justin Torres has had a lot of jobs. He worked on a farm. He walked dogs. He drove a truck, picking up donations around New England. He even had a stint at Brainwash, folding laundry. Thankfully, along the way he began writing, and his debut novel We the Animals was released in September.
...moreSuppose I Kept on Singing Love Songs Just to Break My Own Fall
I don’t remember what I was doing when my aunt called to tell me my father was dying.