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You drove through the city where your mother arrived decades earlier, her clothes tied up in a bedsheet, her Chinese-to-English dictionary dog-eared on the page with your name. You passed fields pearled with people, stopping at a gas station where everyone stared at you, the man in a truck carrying logs thin as shinbones, the woman driving a trailer full of black horses, their
Wool socks. Diapers. Mittens. Hats. Dresses. The fear of God. Dark rye flour. Clogs made from scraps of lumber and leather. The Torah in Hebrew and Russian. One good wool suit. A child’s necktie. The Tsenah Urenah. A straight razor. A hand mirror. The plague of boils. Photographs of faces no longer considered human. The plague of darkness. Armbands bearing the Star of David. Wild yeast. Letters from Palestine and America. A sweater knitted from the remnants of other sweaters. Pots and pans. A spoon, a knife, a fork for the daily business of taking small portions of this world into the gulle...
Sometimes, I throw a light on my bloody history and see myself running through the street of my childhood. Sweat and water dripping from head to toe while my body cruises through space and time with great speed, and passion tingling down my hollowed soul. I ran toward the cathedral. I wanted to make it in life. I wanted to be successful. It seemed too hard for my young self. I wanted to stand up for myself and crush whatever obstacles stood in my way. Early in life, I learned that passion took men out of these streets. After leaving this street, their visions were never the same again. That a...
Polyphonicas a frog heartbeating without the frogand hearts of different sizesbumping aroundinside itit is bestthe sound of the Atlanticentering a bungalowfrom arounda Basque mountainthe old waywindows facing inlandbay’s wind at my backwakes me looking into dirtI go trekand find the coastI live onsalty wafer of aircuts early through the bedroomits rush ricochetinga blue
The thump rocked the concrete walls of Helene’s grocery shop, unleashing echoes from her years living at Prospect Manor, a low-income apartment complex in Oakland, California. There, youths had haunted the basketball grounds at all hours, seemingly drawing energy from dribbles on the cracked asphalt, which harbored in its crevices ancient gum and cigarette butts. Over time, the sound of bouncing basketballs had lodged itself in Helene’s mind, squatting beside static TV noise from the neighbor in 3A. But today, in Pittsburg, forty miles away from Prospect Manor, this basketball had slamme...