The sweater is raspberry red.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

The sweater is crocheted.

The sweater has holes.

The sweater shows skin.

The sweater has no buttons.

The sweater lies open.

The sweater is delicate.

The sweater that resembles a doily.

The sweater that has a history.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

The sweater that goes antiquing.

The sweater that smelled of sherry and cigar smoke.

The sweater that was worn to the court hearing.

The sweater that hates bating.

The sweater has been handed down.

The sweater that was sewn by three women.

The sweater that shielded freckled fair tone skin.

The sweater she had an affair in.

The sweater with the apple sauce stains.

The sweater that has predecessors.

The sweater that speaks in an ethereal voice.

The sweater that is incriminating.

The sweater that is self-conscious.

The sweater with a history.

The sweater with histories.

The sweater that was worn by a school teacher once.

The sweater that was worn by a man’s wife before.

I wear the sweater’s history.

The sweater that has been passed on.

The sweater I now call my own. 

He stood like a mountain

On top of the ledge.

His beard was snowy white

Airy wisps like cotton candy.

He placed his hand firm on my shoulder.

The heavy weight of this man could heal.

He always looked bigger in my dreams. 

“Selection”

Foster nothing but silence.

In May, a guarded advance.

Caught my lone imagination.

Nothing of mine secluded, contaminated,

A virus preserved in you.

A guardian soaked still

In core, sacred testimony

Compact in a consequence’s ill song

Shaped me entirely with ill sound

Delicate voice, with lasting force

Delicate man with handsome strength

Ill vision of mine, alluding

Sequestered, I am finished, secluded. 

“Scelte”

Se fossi nato cieco

e mai, lo sguardo avesse

colto la tua immagine;

nella mia cecità, comunque,

avrei preferito te.

A guardarmi sarebbe stato

il cuore, sacro testimone

capace a colorarmi il sogno

che m’attirava con il suono

della voce, con la forza

delle mani che hanno stretto

il viso mio, annullando

questa finta cecità.

Stone bottom shingles

Angular white confection

Set against the blue. 

There was a hill behind the house, the house we always rented with the bridge over the stairs to my room. The room with the pink curtain, the blow up cactus and a window that opened up to the expanse of the living room. She would come over the bridge and visit me, she always wanted to stay in that room. Out on the hill behind the house, she pranced around in her little blue polka-dotted dress, green wellies, and nothing else, she had refused underwear. Wisps of her unruly strawberry blond hair tied back, she was always ready to put on a show. It smelled of wet grass. Lifting up her dress, she revealed a bare bottom and her svelte little legs cut off mid-calf by her mud-splattered boots.

The surf worked me over and over again sucking in the salt water. He was bearded then and broad, he fished me out of the water. Lifting my wet body up by my underarms. Spitting and giggling, rubbing my eyes a bit, “Do it again!” He hurled me, like a light-weight javelin in a field competition, a javelin wearing a ruffly green onepiece and clear blue jelly sandals.

Her tan legs were shapely. She let me rub the scars on her knees when she put me to sleep at night. My small fingers grazed them, the raised seams, the pinker patches of skin. She would tell me stories about those scars. “Remember France,” she would say. She had come to France with the family one April. Running with the baguette sandwiches, she missed her step, the Nebraskan hit the cobble-stoned street with a hard smack. Blood dripped slowly spreading along the stones. Small cuts on her knees and palms were red, wet, and dirt filled.

His worn hands worked the apple over. Slicing and dicing with his Swiss knife. It was a procedure. Lopping off pieces of skin, manipulating the fleshy parts, detailing the figure and form. Watching him was sobering. His hands working. First, the eyes, then the nose and mouth, sometimes ears, he often added wrinkles for wear. And as the sculpted faces sat finished, the flesh of the apple would brown like they were aging, aging much like his own worn hands.

The establishment had a dingy feel. Stucco walls and muted hues of oranges and reds, like a true, rustic cantina. It was unlit and hot. Sweat saturated sundresses and linen dress shirts. They brought us sangria in clay pitchers, administering the blood red drink with a wooden spoon. The tapas, small and savory, were satiating. Outside the loud bleating of bustling city streets pulled back at us.

Flip flops are swift and his dirty toes saunter in them, flipping and flopping. Flip, flop in canyons deep crevasses in those dirty toes. He smells of cheap beer on the trolley to San Francisco’s rolling hilltops. At the tippy top of that hill she waits for him and his dirty toes. She’s humming a sweet song and strums the left side of her thigh. It itches. Beads of sweat drip down the nape of her neck. Her hair is bobbed like stonework, neatly but jagged. She’s tired. She worked the night shift at the diner. Butter and grease stench her clothes like a stain. Stains, she has those too. A little boy spilt his mother’s coffee on her apron, it looked like swelling rust on the crisp white of the utility-esque clothe. His hands sliver into hers when they meet. They wait together as he grabs his duffle bag. It’s packed with dirty clothes and his toothbrush. He tripped. Laughter sounded laughter. 

Mud season. Carl behind the wheel. Emerson and Kerry in back. Rain beats the windshield. Outside town. By the hill before Bigalow’s farm. Over a rut, then another and one more. We hit Dead Man’s Curve. Wheels slip. Carl slams the breaks. He tries to spin it left, but he’s forced to let go. So the truck, nose up, spun back into a ditch. And we were stuck. 

            If my mother was twenty-eight when she had me, and he was 10 years older than her, then he was thirty-eight. He must have been married by then, but he didn’t have any children. She said that he used to hold me. He would touch my swollen feet and squeeze my plump toes and say that they looked like exotic hors d’oeuvres. That seems so affectionate for a thirty-eight year old man, a man like him.

            I don’t think that he and my mother were very close. Probably because we didn’t see him that much when I was little. We would only see them on Christmas day. His wife was Jewish, so it was one of the holidays that they would not be celebrating with her family. He would come to our house in December wearing Birkenstocks and mismatched socks. And not just socks, but colorful socks, usually one orange and one pink.

            He was always the one to pick our Christmas presents and he was always inventive, or maybe quirky is a better word. One year he gave me a tape measurer because he thought that it is something that everyone should have, you know, in life. I think the best present he ever gave my siblings and I, though, was a collection of 80s horror films and ten pounds of raw meat. I don’t eat meat, but I did enjoy watching Weasels Rip My Flesh, which has probably the worst cinematography of any movie I’ve ever seen. It was such a joke. The flesh-eating weasel looked like a giant turd with legs. I remember my uncle kept shouting, “Look out, it’s a giant excrement!” at the top of his lungs, “A GIANT EXCREMENT!” Now that I think about it, I don’t know how this man was related to my mother. My mother yelled at us when we chewed gum in public. “It’s not ladylike,” she would say.

            My uncle was an artist. He lived in New York City, only a few blocks from the Holland Tunnel. I remember one year, I was probably eleven. My family went into New York to see a show and we stopped by my uncle’s apartment before dinner. My uncle had a pet snake, named Pete. My other uncle, his brother, was named was Pete. I never thought of that before, but that’s pretty funny. Anyways, that night my uncle decided it was time to feed Pete. Out of a crumbled brown paper bag, he pulled three little white mice. He held them upside-down by their tails and dropped them in Pete’s cage. My uncle said I should watch, that it was fascinating to see Pete in action. I shut my eyes tight. Even the thought of it horrified me. Afterwards, we went to the soup dumpling restaurant around the corner from his place, it was my favorite, but I didn’t eat anything.

            This whole episode made me think my uncle was cruel, at least for a while. But, I don’t think he was, not the man who squeezed my toes. What my uncle really was, was eccentric. He liked being unpredictable. It’s funny, my mother commissioned him to do a piece for our living room when she redecorated. She had hired this really froo-froo interior decorator, who insisted on having several meetings with my uncle. He tried to tell him that he should stick to earth tones in the piece, no extreme colors. He clearly didn’t know my uncle. I don’t think my uncle followed a guideline in his entire life. Well, that’s a little extreme, but let’s just say he never liked being restricted.

            A few months later, my uncle brought out his painting from the city. It was a pretty large piece, probably eight by ten feet, I would say. Well of course, it had lime greens, blues, oranges, yellows, reds, and some grays and a few brownish earth tones mixed in. The shapes looked almost machine-ish, but they were toned down by the brighter colors. And the main shape, would you call it a figure maybe, well it had four feet coming out of it. It sounds so bizarre when you try to describe it, but somehow it worked perfectly in our living room. It complemented the room, in a way I don’t think anyone would have guessed.

            Of course the piece was abstract because that is what my uncle painted. But, I would always try to figure out what the paintings were really about. My uncle told us when he dropped off the piece for the living room that it was called, Crazy Mayan Chicken God, he was full of shit. What I think, well, I think that the feet in the painting represent my mother, my uncle and their two brothers, and the machine-ish thing is my grandfather, but that is just a guess. I’m probably wrong. Knowing my uncle, it could have been anything. Anyways my uncle would never tell me what it really was. He is all about the experience of art. He doesn’t believe that the artist should have any impact on someone viewing his or her art. Each person should have his or her own untainted experience. I would have loved to have known what he was thinking about, even for just one of his pieces. 

            I’ve stopped seeing him now, my uncle, now that my parents are dead. It’s like there isn’t an obligation anymore. I stroked the glass frame. My mother was probably three in the picture, barefoot, wearing a polka-dotted dress. So he must have been thirteen. He was already tall. His shoulder was bent awkwardly so he could hold my mother’s hand. They were so far apart, ten years, its not surprising that they weren’t that close, that we’re not that close. 

Story #1—first person narration

            Claire picks up the phone during dinner. Normally, this would totally bother me, but it doesn’t. She sits across from me, chatting away with her mom, wearing a bright yellow t-shirt and a cardigan with a fabulous paisley pattern of oranges and blues, a pattern I know I could never pull off.

            “No, way! I can’t believe y’all did that.” She’s from Houston, probably the only vegan in the whole state of Texas. She plays with her chopsticks, threading noodles of her tofu pad thai.

            “Yeah, I talked to Gi-Gi earlier. She says she’s really pumped up for her match tomorrow.” Her sister’s name is Georgiana, a good Southern name. Claire says that they’re close, I’ve never met her.

            “Ok, mommy. Well, I better go. Tell Craigo I say congrats.”

            She hangs up. She smiles and says, “So apparently my parents went out and bought a new grill today. My dad’s super excited.” She returns to her pad thai, taking a big bite of tofu. I laugh to myself.

Story #2—second person narration

            Mid-April. The first really hot day this spring. You’re done with sweaters and boots. Sifting through your clothes, you pull out your white eyelit tank top. Pulling it over your head, your arms raised, you notice several small tufts of skin. “Oh my god. What are these?”

            “Ewwwww!” your friend screams, “I think they’re skin tags.” You try to pull at one, flicking it back and forth, pulling hard, but this just irritates it more. Great, just what you need, a nice little garden of skin tags under your armpits.

Of course, your initial association with skin tags is Ms. Stacks, fat, old Ms. Stacks. She was your tenth grade history teacher. Remember, she reminded you of Wario, that character that was always picked last in Mario Cart. She was like a gremlin in every way. Stout and her skin was patchish. She would always raise her arms when she lectured and reveal masses of skin tags crowded on her underarms. Everyone was repulsed by her. There’s no forgiving skin tags.

Story # 3—third person

             She swirls her cheerios around her bowl and drops her spoon with a clank, sighing, “I mean. This is a joke.”

            Her friend rubs her shoulder. “He’s gonna call you back, Em.”

            “But, seriously, what is his deal? We hung out on Friday, everything was great. We went to dinner. Conversation was good, not awkward. Not like last time.”

            “Last time?” her friend looked puzzled.

            “Remember Valentine’s?” she said. “This is before we were really friends. He took me out, got flowers—”

            “Oh, yeah!” her friend exclaimed. “Hey, wait, Em didn’t you kind of blow him off after that?”

            “I mean, I wouldn’t say that,” she swirls her cheerios some more. “Well, yeah, ok kind of.”

            “So, he’s probably just nervous. He doesn’t want to be over the top this time.”

            “I guess. That’s a good point,” she conceded. “But, I mean, seriously, he needs to get it together.”