Activity

The moon. There’s no other moon like one on a clear New Mexico night. It rises over the Sandias and soothes the miles and miles of barren desert with all the quiet whiteness of a first snow. Moonlight in Liza’s yellow eyes and the chinaberry tree.

The world just goes along. Nothing much matters,…

When she was gone Rickie Evers dropped his gold cigarette lighter on the floor and when he reached down for it he ran his hand up my leg, stroked the inside of my knee.

I took a bite of the Baked Alaska and said I wondered how they ever managed to do it. He picked his lighter up and told me I ha…

When the figures rose on the hills it was with a swirl of dirt so they looked like silver ghosts, dervishes.

[...] I’d feed him Jell-O and listen to John read from Deuteronomy. I’ve never understood how so many barely literate people read the Bible so much. It’s hard. In the same way it surprises me that uneducated seamstresses all over the world can figure out how to put in sleeves and zippers.

Most writers use props and scenery from their own lives. For example, my Henrietta eats her meager little dinner every night on a blue place mat, using exquisite heavy Italian stainless cutlery. An odd detail, inconsistent, it may seem, with this woman who cuts out coupons for Brawny towels, but it…