Notes for a Community College Commencement Speech From a certain perspective everything looks like math but if you pay attention to the subtext it says to work on being charming and go into sales. Not cut out for sales I got a job redirecting people’s negative thoughts. I think the mind is sometimes a vaulted ceiling and sometimes a shallow pit. Everyone wants to be both a child and a great Oak tree. My father wanted me to be a simple country doctor; my mother, a tech giant.

My son’s latest venture is hunting down and slaying vampires. From my seat on the porch, I’m watching him fling wooden stakes at a propped-up life-sized cardboard cutout of my sister that has been sitting around collecting dust since we’d used it for her 40th birthday party, the last time I had any contact with her.  My son’s getting better. Just now he nailed her body double directly between the eyes, although technically I think the stake is supposed to pierce the heart.  I

You stare at the blank page, the cursor cursing.  You type; this is a story about anxiety. A story about the time the wind screamed until the sky grew orange and the clouds choked on ash and where do you go? Where do you go?  You backspace; this is a story about the doctor who gave you someone else’s diagnosis.  You backspace again; This is a story about the hand that bites, words that chew.  You backspace. Again. Again. Again.  This is a story about a flag your family wants

Thinks She Sees Everything Ma plucks straight pins from the cushion, grips half between her lips, hems my too-long taffeta bridesmaid’s...

You knocked on my door that morning holding an empty gasoline can and asked to borrow some milk. I told you I bought by the quart, but...

You ask to stop at the café, that pretty little one on Berry Street, because you’re thirsty and need caffeine, and I ask you if I’m...

No one - neither friends nor family, the tea leaves, my horoscope nor the lines on my palm - have warned me to avoid you:  the...

My daughter – your Wham-bam!  granddaughter – has become an almost-stranger with her Bif-boom! attitudes and Kerpow! moods . The distance...

I know you watched us. How could you not? Your damn porch light was like a spotlight that caught my skin in the strapless bikini I...

The crayons are hard to write with. They catch and drag on the walls. I want the red crayon, red, but it keeps breaking and my hand hurts...

Missing Every night I look at your bed, wrinkled sheets still caught in mid-ripple. The breeze from the cracked-open window billows the...

Before I dated Tina, I assumed everyone hated their family. Isn’t that the reason there’re all those holiday movies? Those...

Because I'm a budding flower, Monsignor tells me. Because I'm ripe with pollen, a flower near bloom, I entice bees. He’s the bee, you...

When I complain about peri-menopause—weight gain, hot flashes, dark spots on my face—the doctor insists on a pregnancy test, and I laugh...

Because we don’t know how to lose Because we don’t know how to lose we lie in bedrooms feet splayed against ice cream tinted walls, pink...

When You Book Us a Tarot Reading After Your Death... I show up, you are still my sister after all. You say I’m late, but it’s easy for...

Under a dayglow sun, you crawl along Witham Way, windows down, glad of the roadworks that slow the traffic as you imagine the Capri...

Making music He hated losing her. Like his clarinet, she’d felt good in his hands. But when he learned she’d hid his invitation to...

Smile uneasily while being dismayed that they’re all middle-aged Remember, with profound disappointment, that you’re nearly thirty-nine...

“It’s perfect!” Johnny Hurley and Robbie Decker stood in front of a small, rundown house that was surrounded by overgrown weeds and...