Category: Uncategorized

Sitting in the South Bend airport, I feel veritably assaulted by the wave of placelessness. Staring down the daunting prospect of four hours, I debate whether or not I should leave. Leaving an airport does feel somewhat untoward, like walking backwards through a door. Airports are less places than non-places. I debate whether or not…

Caitlin Flanagan just wrote at truly excellent piece on abortion for the Atlantic, sensitively looking at the different sides of the argument for women’s access to abortion. Her opening examination of Lysol-induced abortions chilled me to the bone. Infuriating, truly, that women would both feel such dire responsibility for the child that their husband’s sexual…

Matilda, patron saint of women on the lam, is an advocate to be wary of, her intercessions are munificent, her willingness to oblige— elaborate. My perpetual query: how much grace to extend to those who do not give it back? How to ration? Which guideline for pneumatic portion control? These questions are not Matilda’s, She…

In the warm fluorescents of the blessed second floor— o holy tall tables— consider the painting who could only be called the modern Icarus, a fractured reflection of the man and his son tumbling over my shoulder. Consider when you fly, have flown, concrete examples in past perfect. A spark in between two ponchos in…

Tell me a story, you say, Late at night, under the comforter, on a cold summer night. You’re a writer—write me something. Something beautiful. When you are a hotel, I begin, Each night when I check in, I will open up each room, to discover different memories of where we’ve been. The states we’ve visited?…

Of course all art is omnidirectional, but this is straight from the bones of my grandmother’s joy as she reaches for a new book and the love bled into my lungs by my mother’s womb. This is straight at the sick-souled man who taught me how to fear instead of love. This is for the…

You were heir to some city-state, Verona, say, sent to Bologna, finishing school for minor city princes. I was a diligent itinerant, a Dominican, eh? Pounding out my questios posing disputationes at U of P—what posh Parisians called it in those days. Each sunset, letters raced across the Alps, one thousand kilometers— as the pigeon…

In college, while “studying abroad” (such a glorious remnant of a European past before unions or skepticism of them), it is popular among American university students to visit Estonia, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic. Because these formerly iron curtained countries are relatively inexpensive, and a college student on a budget could squeeze three or four…

Wash my pride, Sparkling yellow, red is too rich for our blood. We are weak. Our lips are chapped. Dancing in the golden cup, Light-rimmed golden wine Given for your poverty and mine.