Bode and Iris
July 17, 2019[…] odd that an experienced fornicator like Bode Carpenter would get the girl pregnant in the first place —particularly because he carried a condom in the watch pocket of his jeans on that fateful evening. […]
[…] odd that an experienced fornicator like Bode Carpenter would get the girl pregnant in the first place —particularly because he carried a condom in the watch pocket of his jeans on that fateful evening. […]
[…] she knew only that it made her nervous; and it made the cultural refinement teacher’s voice unbearable —grating and relentless as a washing machine’s uneven-load buzzer. She had to turn it off. When she […]
[…] The smell of coffee and baked bread exploded from the doorway when his grandmother appeared. “Dzien dobry,” she said. She was short, plump, wore her hair in a bun, and despite her false teeth […]
I remember that day perfectly —every violet plum with its orange smudges, the rim of the huge blue canning kettle smeared with thick yellow slime and little tatters of purple peel. It was the […]
[…] All of a sudden this guy runs to the stage and screams until his neck turns red —like a chicken about to get his head chopped off: ‘Shut up! Fernando’s trying to give the […]
Sunrise, Friday, November, 22,1963, not yet but about to be one ugly day in U.S. history, and standing over there about to climb into the family Nova was my dad, Jack, the man suffering […]
Here they go, Carma without her cane —she’ll hang onto Dan if her legs give way—through the glass doors into the maze of parents and teenagers and little brothers and sisters, milling, waving, shrieking, […]
[…] wanted it to fall? Ada wouldn’t even let him fix the fence it fell on. She pled —no, she insisted, in that sing-songy, nodding-forward way of hers—that he stick to what he knew best. […]
[…] piece here. Tim’s wife left him with three dozen blue spruce still trussed up on the truck and better than fifty juniper, Scotch, red cedar, and Douglas on the lot. She left him when […]
[…] develop to their maximum potential. Nor can we overlook Christ’s injunction to love our neighbors as ourselves —”neighbor” stretching beyond our brethren in the Church to include strangers, the downtrodden, those who suffer adversity, […]