March in February

We were reading a science fiction story in which the people do not eat real food, but only some kind of artificial goo. “That’s like what my cousin had,” a student said. “She was out of her mind and drank drain cleaner, so they had to feed her through a tube.” “Whoa,” I said. “That’s […]

Ravaged

“Katrina” sounds accusatory to me now. It used to be a comforting word. I knew this woman named Katrina enough to ask to share her table at coffee, on one of those outrageous days when people who don’t normally drink coffee are bored or cold or whatever and they invade my coffee sanctuary as stupid […]

Dancing

I went straight from a Midwestern Baptist-style funeral to summer-steamed New Orleans. One minute I was singing a hymn in a pew, and hours later I was on a bus staring at the rehabbed Superdome, seeing the ghosts of the abandoned along the clean sidewalk. I had to say some firm, abbreviated goodbyes to get […]