She told me she was 2300 years old. I told her she didn’t look a day over 2250. She said cool never heard that one before but I’m pretty sure she was being sarcastic and then she said she was actually monoecious and her preferred pronoun was they. I was too embarrassed to say anything at that point so we were both silent for a while looking out over the mountain together and it was one of the most beautiful and peaceful experiences of my life and when I finally looked up again they were smiling down at me. I smiled too and looked back out at the view thinking how they were older than the pandemic of 1918, older than vaccines, older than Genghis Khan and Jesus and I just kept smiling. I couldn’t stop smiling.
Continue readingCategory Archives: fiction
A New Day
If you voted, phonebanked, textbanked, donated, marched, had those difficult conversations with family, helped register voters, shared resources, or showed up in whatever way you could… thank you.
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What I’ve Been Up To
INT. MY LIVING ROOM – DAY
I’m on the couch, mid Zoom call with Ted, a young, hungry producer I used to know, who wanted to see what I’ve been up to.
TED
Tarot?
ME
Mmhm.
TED
Like… the cards.
ME
Yeah.
In Preparation
I surrender now
Give myself over to
The whisper
And the soft music in the walls
In the ether
Where everything hovers
Waiting
Even the dust,
Giddy with the promise of renewal
Dim the lights, burn the mugwort
Tonight, we commune.
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Annie Proulx 🎈
Happy Birthday to Pulitzer-prize winning author, Annie Proulx, who turns 84 today and whose fiction transports the reader into pockets of rural America most will never see. You don’t really read an Annie Proulx story, you inhabit it, and no matter how somber or bleak the journey, you are always the better for it.
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Animal Space
Oh muse,
how you fix at me with sleepy eyes
your tail a pendulum, back and forth
cleaving bloated minutes on the brink
(always on the brink)
of the next idea.
Oh muse,
how your whiskers twitch ‘gainst hurried hands
feeding hands that nag now, stop and start
pounding, locked in some human rhythm
(desperate, choked rhythm)
of the next idea.
Oh muse,
how you warm my side
how you moan and purr
how you sleep a tiger’s sleep of stoic peace
beyond ideas
in the animal space
dreaming of blackbirds and tattered socks
and little plastic milk tops that tap and crinkle cross the floor.
