The Turtle Knows the Way
On my trip back from the gym today, I saw a bump not too far from the house and slowed down. It was a turtle. I remembered how this time last year, a mama turtle had visited our back yard and spent a half-day digging up a place in the mud to deposit her eggs. […]
Mother’s Day
One of those toad strangler storms. Can’t see. Lakes filling up on the front lawn. I’m swept into the bayou, in pajamas, a stick of balsa bobbing for help. Warnings about snakes, moccasins. Front face. See our house, know I’m not getting there any time soon. Shit. Mother’s Day and you were going to take […]
Paschal Lamb
and maybe it will be a promised land when values can run wild
and trump the Trumps everywhere
Spring in Louisiana
Violets getting pushy on front lawns. Redbud trees pink against winter’s bare branch. Irises swell in bed, such proud mamas. Butterweed give yellow a new name. Thatches of loblolly surround bald land. Wisteria is lace, the purple rain. Couches of azalea watch the passing game.
Date Night at the Half & Half: Rae-Ann (5)
She looked at the clock. She was expecting him to come through the door at any moment. After all, it was getting close to 7:30 in the morning. Vernon was always on time. Earl had been the same way. But that’s not to say she hadn’t heard a lot of scuttlebutt—over the years people gossiped, […]
Vernon and Rae-Ann (4)
One summer Domino did get covered with fleas and Rae-Ann did just what her auntie had told her. By the time Domino shook herself dry, the dog was clean and ran up to lick Rae-Ann’s hand. Not a single flea. But when Aunt Dee became sick, some kind of nerve damage that attacked her heart […]
Billy Goat Gruff: Rae-Ann (3)
But Eudora wasn’t the only one who shared their private business with Rae-Ann. Maybe it was because there was something in the way she presided over a sea of six-packs and zip-lock bags. Or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the store was a frequent contributor to the town’s soccer and […]
Ten Years Later
“No limits, just edges.” –Jackson Pollack You were so fantastic, reminded me of Gene Wilder with wild eyes, green and lashed, red hair spun by Rumplestiltskin into breakers that broke at your forehead, something primeval in the way you understood the world, a Willy Wonka who spoke, but did not speak the same language as […]
Shopping Cart
Heads of lettuce are deconstructed into plastic tubs that cost twice as much, if not more than whole heads replaced by escarole, radicchio, and baby spinach leaves. Romaine (cos) and iceberg (crisphead) continue to be available. Even so, the more nutritious outer leaves have been stripped away to reveal pale green. Walmart sells hearts four […]
Shopping at Walmart in January
Walmart ordered way too many bicycles this year to sell over the Christmas holidays. They outline the entrance to the store all the way back to the Garden Center, blue and pink bicycles, waiting like lost puppies for a family to take home. It is January, post-holidays, several weeks since we’ve gone shopping. Provisions are […]