Expressways

The first walk around my neighborhood in three months reveals what I had suspected: any sign of spring is way underground. My sycamores are still skeletal. The locusts are still wearing a few of their blackened seed pods, like they forgot to take off their eyeliner after a great party. Everywhere I looked for a […]

Size Matters

This week I drank a glass of merlot at happy hour. It was no big deal to anyone except me. For many years, I gave up alcohol for Lent. I felt like I needed to rethink my ritual, so I decided I would be easier on myself. I’m calling this a “soft Lent.” I would […]

For Peace and Freedom

So they dug out this ash heap in Queens and built all these pavilions. They had cars already driving around in 1939. Cars were not yet drudgery and traffic jams and Jiffy Lube– they were leisure and freedom. They had an early television. Television was not yet aesthetic assault and battery everywhere you turn. You could see the Magna Carta. They had a dishwasher, which was about to make everyone’s life better (except for people who insist on living in minimally renovated pre-1935 housing like stupid, stupid me). They had a robot who smoked cigarettes. He was seven feet tall, spoke 700 words from the record player in his belly, and I would definitely go out on a date with him if his reconstruction goes as planned.

To Ashes

I used to find the ashes creepy. Everyone in this church will die. Every old person, young person, baby, and flower in this church will die. (I think all our flowers are real.) As they come down the steps, I would imagine their funerals. What will be said? Where will it be? Will a lot […]