A Column of The Miramichi Reader
You remember the hurricane barreling toward the Connecticut coast when you were eight. And the rain pouring down the gutters, slamming the screens so you had to close all the windows. You remember the news updates, sirens at noon, and how the rain stopped, a muggy mist descended, and a quiet settled as the storm …
Jay wasn’t a distraction at all. I wasn’t able to see him through the classroom door if I bent to the right angle. He didn’t pretend he didn’t see me. I didn’t sit up straight pushing my chest forward. He didn’t have thick black hair that shone blue despite the florescent lights. We didn’t share …
“Don’t tell your father,” Mom would say, folding a lottery ticket and slipping it into her purse. Poor people’s tax, Dad scoffed every time he spotted the Washington State Lottery’s “Dept. of Imagination” logo. He never bought a ticket, but Mom stopped by the counter under the four-leaf-clover banner when it was just the two …
Elaine: My friend Irma says everything’s a blessing: “I’m sorry about your cat but it’s probably a blessing in disguise.” “Your wallet—well with that horrid picture of you on your license you should count it as a blessing.” “You burned the cake while talking to me on the phone? You don’t need the calories—it’s a …
1.My sister and I were reminiscing about the shithole days when Dad picked up a knife and threatened to stab all of us at the dinner table, and, when playing a board game, he picked up a gun, and pushed it against our heads. 2.Years ago, before guns were everywhere, I remember walking over to …
As usual, he’d collected her from the station and they were driving through the countryside on their way to the coast. “I’m leaving,” she said. He glanced at her. “Okay. Let’s make the most of today.” He looked through the windscreen at the white van ahead of them and saw the scroll of shadows that …
There’s a piece of pencil lead in my arm. It’s not really lead but graphite. If you glance quickly, you’d assume it was another freckle. Been there forty years and I haven’t had cancer. Maggie Freeman punched me by accident in the third grade, scooping up crayons, pencils, and erasers to put in her Barbie …
We’re lying in the middle of a cracked country road, fireflies blinking a message we’re too human to understand. The gravel is hot on my shoulders, the sweat gathering and pasting the grit from the tarmac on my elbows and calves. My chest heaves from chasing you earlier, my throat raw from yelling your name. …
My people came down from the mountains, brittle ghosts armed with blades and hacksaws. They were big eared, small-footed and had red-knuckled hands. They carried no expectations. The men were tough and canny, ready with violence, religiously upright, but secret drunks. The women bore the men, bruised and joking. They were hard and selfish people, …
He said he was sure the house they’d stayed in had been halfway between a rock at the end of the beach and the Māori pa site. He remembered paddocks opposite where the owners kept their horse. And a garden full of lemon bushes and a path that led down to the beach. The librarian …
A week after she married him, she cut her hair. The scissors made a hungry sound working their way through the curls. You cut your hair, he said, when he came home. Nothing more. She thought he might have said, You cut off your beautiful hair, but his mouth could not make the shape of …
I was alone in a second-class car on a train out of Madrid, bound for Barcelona. Yesterday I’d spent twenty minutes standing in front of Picasso’s Guernica, which was black and white like old war photographs and far larger than I expected. I was twenty years old. No painting could make me cry back then, …