Not long after the death of my grandfather (爷爷/爺爺), my family resumed its familiar tradition. When both my grandparents were alive, my parents, my sister and me would be regularly treated to dinner at their home, where we’d enjoy the familial and communal experience of eating together and watching television. The stark difference now was […]
grief
When Silence Fails
It is almost exactly ten yearssince we shared drunken kissesin an unheated barin Chattanooga, Tennessee.Later that night, drunker still,a kiss broke into laughterwhen we rolled off my bedand fell to the floor. Ten years later: youstill in Tennessee, in Nashville, mein Phoenix, Arizona. A catch-upconversation: You told me aboutyour kidney transplants, addictionto pain medication, recovery,getting […]
Dad
He ate plain oatmeal every morning in the same leather chair that mom got him for Father’s Day in 88. One breakfast after finishing an orange grapefruit, I told him that I loved him just loud enough so he would not hear
Grieving
The Santoku knifeI gave to my brotherbut wish I hadn’t And some nights when Duke and Hankare on the turntable I still drop what I am doing
Not Even His Mother
No one could breathe for him.Hauled onto the curb as if he were dead already. Heavy as a bag of sand at a construction site. Still human, sucking the steel-tipped teeth of men. Gathered around his neck. They say that you had enemies.Perhaps he was one of them.They say you had a background. Maybe that is why your mother’s […]
My Turn
When it was my turn to go in,I sat cross-legged by the ventilator and told my buddy goodbye.I could have cried but he deserved more. He deserved what carries no weight.Time. Before the lungs fill with river water and the dream oozes away from the ribs of lotus petals caught between the rocks.
My Turn
When it was my turnto go in I sat cross-leggedby the ventilator and told my buddygoodbye. I could have cried but he deserved more than that. He deservedwhat carries no weight. Time. Before the lungs fill with river water, and the dream oozes away from fingers like the texture of drowning lotus petals no longercaught between the rocks.
The reason elephants console each other
Because when the nightmoves against us, we dig inand take notice of our memories,those weightless shadows fallingon the fragile marsh.
Radiation from the Big Bang
Dear grandpa,I never met whopulled the trigger. They say that youhad enemies andit was the Depression, but who really knows?Your ashes were scatteredsomewhere in the valley and the records back thenwere never kept the way theyshould have been. Anyways, there is far too much chatterabout all of that now, in the background, as the evidence […]