Steel

My darling friend, with whom I sat in the passenger seat of my own car, as he drunkenly drove it up the hill, from downtown Kansas City, to wherever we were going, it didn’t matter, the top was down, and I put in “Kind of Blue,” an entry-level, amateur jazz album, but the only level […]

Bulbs

So many things happen that you don’t know where to put. 1. I went to a wedding party. I used to babysit for a family of three kids. One of them grew up, got sick, and died. The other two were at the party. It made me think about how we were alive. We danced […]

The End of the World

Saturday morning, I was trained as a poll watcher. It was a classic meeting of Democrats, mildly disorganized, with people passionate and loving and ready to leap down each other’s throats because we aren’t as good at organizing as the fascists are. “But when do we…?” “But who is our…?” “Do we need to […]

November to December

The Kavanaugh hearings made me dangerously depressed. Everything went grey, like my head had filled with coal smoke. Polluted times, breath shallow and unproductive, no sea, no mountaintops, all low. Walking brick sidewalks, lumpy, getting books from the library, slick library covers sliding against each other. Walking under bright orange leaves before blue sky. Carrying […]