Statement of Record
TV anchors gab about binge-
watching, riots, and tattoos.
The machine has a boo boo.
We are in some deep doo doo.
Blue jays peck red berries,
91 degrees and I am a sap.
Jupiter’s ma pushes old news:
It’s more fun with someone.
Okay, steeple chaser, let’s see
your stuff. Here’s a hot ticket
for the...
The terms nostalgia / sentimentality / despair / denial...
Even under the best of circumstances, making it onto an organ transplant list is no easy feat. Simply needing an organ isn’t quite enough; rather, you undergo a battery of tests, procedures, and consultations over a series of weeks to prove you are not only healthy enough to survive a transplant, but also have insurance approval to foot the massive bills—and a...
It starts like a great spring exhaustion. But after a couple of days the spaces between my ribs begin to tingle, and my head hurts like I have a migraine.
I think about the Easter eggs, the cake that needs to be baked, and the family excursions we had planned. But once the pressure over my lungs...
You must believe me. I had never done anything like this before. Yes, it was his first time coming to my unit. It was my fault. I started it all. I read it in an old book I found in the attic and I mentioned it to him. The book said that it used to be an old custom. I’m so stupid! I should have known better. He had a way of...
I have been sleeping. Midday naps to kill some time. Without a constant occupation, quarantine in times of Corona has meant that there’s much more time to spend. From mid-March to May, we stayed at home as a family, but we weren’t terribly concerned. The only thing that kept my physician father...
Recently an old knee injury from my twenties flared up. The knee aches every time I walk down the few steps into the garage. In bed at night, I can feel it throbbing; it distracts me from the book I’m reading. I blame it on the fact that the pool is closed and I haven’t been swimming. Instead I’ve been walking a lot—almost exclusively with the double stroller. I...
It was the middle of January and my Kiwi husband and I were packing for our annual holiday to our other home in New Zealand. The Covid-19 virus was wreaking havoc in Wuhan, China but seemed confined to that Asian province. However, in the short time between preparing to leave and the actual date of our departure, January 28, Wuhan was cut off from the world as...
J and K, the owners of the house, come out to greet us when we pull into the driveway. They live next door in another house mostly hidden by trees. J, a big man in jeans and suspenders, keeps at least ten feet from us. K hovers another ten feet or so farther back. With her straight grey bob, she doesn’t exactly remind me of my mother but she...
The Covid test for my son came back positive. Great, I told myself, first you gave him autism, now the plague. Dan, 32, has been unable to speak since he was three and a half, a rare case of Childhood Disintegrative Disorder. Doctors told my husband and me to expect the worst. This, they said, was as...
Today a man died in front of our building, or maybe he didn’t. It’s spring 2020 in Brooklyn, New York. Yesterday, the death count was only forty-six, the day before it was sixty-one. Up and down have replaced north and south on the compass. I opened our front door, masked and gloved, inhaling Pine Sol from the spray bottle we use on the door knob we share with other...
I’m definitely getting tracked and docile
But random celebrities
Reminding me I’m home
Is not my idea of soma.
Systemic response
Is kicking in amongst the primates
Creating new vectors
Of chronic frustration, chains of...
Statement of Record