My daughter was thirteen years old when she asked my wife–Mama, why does the whole world hate women.
She had ingested some of the rhetoric around Christine Blasey-Ford’s testimony against Supreme Court then nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Despite the all girls middle school and being raised in a nurturing matriarchy–two mother household–we could not shelter her from this realization.
Everything is backwards in the world of rowing, they/
we love this story, it lends a modicum of superiority
On a warm day in autumn, I take my niece to the science museum a few blocks from my house. Soon she is going to leave me and move to California.
Read MoreMe, hitting the floor frontside up,
hard. She, all blue-eyed worry, hoping
to teach me the game.
Lara had expected a hole in the wall restaurant for her welcome lunch, but the Tex-Mex restaurant her new boss had chosen was fancy: sleek marble-top tables and drippy-crystal chandeliers, generous helpings of guacamole in pebbled mortars, a whole page on the menu just for tequilas.
Read MoreFor a marketing project at my daughter’s business school, students were given the opportunity to be spin-doctors for real-life company mishaps that turned into media nightmares.
Read MoreApril 2020 / after illustrator James Boyle’s Philly Tarot Deck, King of Cups
Read MoreMy head itched, but I couldn’t bend my elbows to scratch under my hat. It was a cold January evening in 1992.
Read MoreShe’s still sore because I watched the game
last night. This day-cruise on the Rhine
hasn’t changed her mind – although she did
enjoy the Riesling and laughed at one of my jokes.
Winter wind picked up and darkness fell and Chris was preparing for his date with the young swimmer. He stood before the mirror buttoning his shirt hearing thin dry ticks at his back as the wind shot splintered ice against the windowpane.
Read MoreQuan Barry was born in Saigon and raised on Boston’s North Shore. She is the author of six books of fiction and poetry, including the recent novel We Ride Upon Sticks, which O: Oprah Magazine describes as, “Spellbinding, wickedly fun.”
Read MoreSword Class NYC met in a basement. I arrived on a Tuesday evening with my Groupon for “Longsword for Beginners,” after rereading A Song of Ice and Fire. Inspired by George R.R. Martin’s tiny assassin Arya Stark, I wanted to participate in a montage of nonstop, meditative fencing, to be an older, hotter version of the underestimated child–anything to give me a sense of power while I faced weekly rejection.
Read MoreMy dad’s old white mini-van broke down
in the tiny back lot at the Oval––
the engine stalled on the highway,
June packs all her belongings into her dad’s truck on a white-hot Sunday in July and moves into a small three-bedroom apartment with two men who she found on Craigslist. “We got a cat. You allergic?” one of the men—Eddie?—asks.
Read MoreI wondered where my brothers went
those high school mornings – tying running
shoes, racing into morning fog.
Don’t save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion, the quote on the Mary Engelbreit calendar page for June 2014 read.
Read MoreMy father was a sailor
radio signal's feverish tap at fourteen
Fifteen all.
“Come on!” the crowd yelled. “Allez!”
I want to honor the girl I was
playing softball, pitcher, the heart
of the team but shy, the fulcrum
but broken
open by my brother,
“Ya know, you take on your spouse’s debt,” William told his son who had just announced he was getting married.
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