Activity

Again, we proceeded to the hospital. This time she was admitted at seven centimeters, and the bitchy midwife’s shift had ended, hurrah. The new midwife was a rad old battle-axe. The gymnast wanted to be in the tub, so into the tub she went, and stayed. She had zero body hair. I tried not to let thi…

I showed my friend how to wrap her newborn securely onto her chest, and we ventured out on a slow walk around the block, her first trip outside the condo since returning from the hospital. There were blossoms on the trees and the sunlight was sweet. My friend seemed newly born herself. She looked a…

Beauty salons are, in their own way, war trenches and dugouts. Hungry soldiers hide in them, smeared with creams, injured by injections, ready to endure anything for the sake of anything.

The only language the cosmetologist understood — the woman knew this with a sure and certain knowledge — was the language of skin.

You can visit the cosmetologist whenever you feel troubled, but you must arm yourself with phrases like My face is bloated or My skin is dehydrated, it lost its lust…

I EDIT THREE TYPES of work: my writing, other people’s writing, and the two-headed monster that is my translation work — a mix of my writing and somebody else’s. When I teach creative writing I also close read the so-called classics with my students. These four activities amount to a lot of extreme…