If I can remember anything, it is the sidewalk burning, burgeoning darkness over the river. The hushed rush to shelter, subway, awning, underneath anything that can protect from the oncoming onslaught. A few hesitant spurts, is that the condensation from the air conditioning units falling to the earth? No. A light wind has its way … More the storm & afterwards
They tell me that my first word was strawberry. Of course, it was more like sogabie, but a valient effort nonetheless. Before mother, before father, it was a fruit. … They read to me about a badger whose favorite food is bread and jam. It is called Bread and Jam for Frances. I do not … More bread and jam and strawberries
I am so young that I can’t remember the world being anything other than enormous. The road from our apartment to the park winds too close to being a journey I can’t make on six-year-old feet. My father holds my hand as I balance on the curb. I must have walked so many miles that … More the first death
My mother says that she had splitting migraines when she was pregnant with my brother. A month of bedrest and cabin fever, one moment of a heartbeat fallen too far, a cesarean birth, and her head split open from the inside all the whole while through. I don’t think she had ever quite forgiven him … More migraines and nightmares
We left the school at five in the morning, hauling hockey gear. It was hours to Pennsylvania, and we wanted to get there early. A full Greyhound bus with only eight high school boys, a tired coach and me. I tried to read. The boys played video games and gossiped about people I didn’t know. … More protect the goalie
Note: This seemed too personal to share at first, but you reconsider. xoxoxoxo ~acb … I ask her what it was like, but she only smiles. At last, she tells me that I chewed on her shirt when I was first born, that the nurse said, “Hey! That’s a shirt!”, that I tried to eat … More my mother
Going through some old high school things, discovered this gem. Too many adjectives, mixed metaphors; not my style any more, thank goodness. But whenever I try to edit this one, something stops me. Something about this one, even if it is poor writing, is good. ~acb … When I was six, I knew what real … More small sorrows, like swallows
The greatest pain was when I took a slap shot to the inside of my thigh, high and close to the inside. The bruise blotted first yellow, red veins beneath, then a mottled purple that grew as blue as my eyes. My body seemed to see itself for the first time, how much pain it … More the greatest pain
There was a time when I wrote too much to know what I was writing. The same poems over and over again. Nothing much changes, over years, save the length of the sentence fragments and how they are arranged. When will the rhythm change, the same inflection and flatness masquerading as profundity. Perhaps this is … More what they mean
A few dreams ago, I watched the dancers float in and out of the stage, a long dark canyon into fog. Rehearsing and misremembering, I watch children weep in white. Some float away into the rafters as they cry, buoyant by means not their own. Their tears stain the stage. I sop them up with … More three dreams
anna-christina betekhtin 