My mother used to have us children memorize poems in the summers. I don’t remember if we got a reward or not (learning to dive merited a candy bar, so I suspect the same for poem-memorization), but we didn’t resist. The easiest poems to memorize were A.A. Milne’s from the wonderful When We Were Very […]
MoreThe Weakness By Toi Derricotte That time my grandmother dragged me through the perfume aisles at Saks, she held me up by my arm, hissing, “Stand up,” through clenched teeth, her eyes bright as a dog’s cornered in the light. She said it over and over, as if she were Jesus, and I were […]
MoreA few days after Christmas, a dear friend from high school passed away after a 15-year battle with breast cancer. When I first met Christine freshman year, she was the prettiest girl I’d ever met and certainly the friendliest. Anyone sizing up the two of us—she blond and bubbly, me silent and awkward—would not have […]
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