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Mental Health
Fiction
The Falls
On our way to the Maumee River Trail, my boyfriend, Lenny, asks me if I want to go to Albany with him in two weeks. He has found a really cheap Airstream trailer for sale on the Internet and wants to check it out.
July 2005
Sy Safransky’s Notebook
May 2005
Infinity to the left of me, infinity to the right — and, within me, a vast inner space of thoughts and feelings. My space, I call it, just as I call this body mine. My country. My planet. And the stars — are they mine, too? And what of the darkness between them?
May 2005Readers Write
On The Edge
Running away from your life, hiding from a would-be rapist, watching the neighborly veneer crack after two hurricanes
May 2005
Fiction
My Mother’s Convalescence
I was riding in the back seat of my Aunt Belle’s Cadillac when my cousin Joanie whispered, “You want some gum?” then leaned over to me and stuck her tongue in my mouth. When she sat back, smiling, I found that she’d left her gum behind. It was gnarled and cold and foreign-tasting, I suppose because it was wet with someone else’s saliva.
May 2005
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
Surviving The Body
A thick canopy of smells — car exhaust, rotting vegetables, melting tar — hung in the sweltering midafternoon air. As I stepped onto a narrow side street to escape the noise and crowds, my left leg buckled beneath me, and I fell down in a puddle of motor oil in front of a sidewalk stand.
April 2005
Fiction
Not A Scratch
The first time he takes a shower after coming home, he looks himself over: Ten fingers. Ten toes. No scars beyond the ones he collected in childhood.
April 2005Readers Write
Apologies
Clipping perfect long-stemmed roses, having failed as a teacher, keeping people happy while they piss away all their money playing high-limit baccarat and blackjack
February 2005
Fiction
My Sister, The Writer
My sister is a writer. She writes terrible things about me. She thinks she is telling the family secrets, but we all think she’s hysterical.
January 2005
Essays, Memoirs & True Stories
My Lunatic Brother
I’m sitting in my parents’ living room, listening to my older brother, Ben, tell the family how he’s recently discovered that his phone is being tapped. His tone is casual, even upbeat, as if he were discussing a stretch of unusually good weather.
December 2004
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