"My name is Evangeline, and I am an alcoholic."

For more years than she cared to remember, she had practiced these words before the gilt-framed mirror in her foyer. Contrite words, seasoned with a wistful touch of acceptance that her success in recovery was, indeed, contingent upon the intercession of a higher power. Or sometimes she would say "My name is Evangeline, and I am an addict." She spoke these words with more contrition (as it was also illegal), the tone of each phrase well-laced with the hope for recovery. Chin up, eyes lifted and inviting contact. Expression regretful, yet determined to confront the consequences of her past with courage. Who could have imagined the success of her performances? Who could have dreamed of the actress that lay sleeping inside her, ignored for so many years?

She'd once tried to become a member of Overeaters Anonymous, but that was too much of a stretch for a woman who at five feet eleven weighed in at barely 130 pounds. There they viewed her with suspicion and even a measure of hostility, despite her delicious low-cal artichoke risotto and warm asparagus and spinach salad. Her claim to struggle with her weight after losing more than one hundred pounds did not ring true. Their eyes crawled over her taut little body, seeking signs of past obesity and finding her wanting. Eventually she left OEA. It was a group whose envy (when they believed her story) and distrust and puzzlement (when they did not) left her feeling as rejected as her deceased husband's icy family ever had. It was as an alcoholic and addict that she finally found her niche.   Continue…

Jana spotted Kent and Barbara before they could pick her out among the other passengers in the little airport. They both looked tanned and healthy, outrageously so, Jana thought. Barbara's figure, athletic but never curvy, had settled into the solid, big-boned authority of middle age. She'd let her hair—still that same wild mass of shoulder-length curls—go completely gray, and a pair of artsy, beaded earrings hung boldly from each lobe. The effect of all of this, the gray hair, the bright turquoise and coral against her friend's tanned and weathered skin, seemed somewhat dramatic. Barbara had finally achieved that earth-mother look she'd been after since way back in college.

And Kent, perhaps a little heavier than the last time she'd visited, still managed to maintain his Nordic look of rugged handsomeness. The same blue eyes, intelligent and perpetually hinting at some private amusement, ranged over the group of travelers, and finally alighted on Jana's. A smile of unrestricted pleasure spread across his face before he threw his arm over his wife's shoulder and steered her in Jana's direction.

"Oh my God!" Barbara called, "The Yankee has arrived!" Jana felt fragile in her friend's crushing embrace. Then Barbara held Jana at arm's length, tipped her head back, and let loose the throaty laugh that had become her signature.

"Well, yes, I suppose I have," said Jana. "But, look who's talking. Remember, once a New Yorker, always a New Yorker."

"Aaah don't know 'bout that, pumpkin," Barbara fake-drawled.   Continue…

One morning in late June, in the year before the century turned, the world stopped spinning for a moment, and Melissa Montgomery stepped off.

It had been a tough year. In January, her father had died. After a seventy-year love affair with cigarettes, his death was not unexpected, but Melissa had been close to him and not quite ready to watch him depart. In February, her best-friend, Gillian, the girl with whom she had shared handkerchiefs and wine gums since primary school, locked herself in the bathroom and swallowed five packets of aspirin and a bottle of gin. In March, they buried her mother. A blessing, some might say, after the gut-wrenching agony of widowhood. But still. And so on to April and the demise of the small business she had run from home, designing and printing letterheads and compliment slips for other small businesses run by other women from home. Gone bust through universal access to clipart and four months of inattention.

May arrived. The daffodils had come and gone. New lambs had been bleating in the fields for weeks. Another death would have been obscene at that time of the year.

In May, Melissa's husband became a father. Sadly this event did not coincide with Melissa becoming a mother. Melissa had never been pregnant.

He found her a studio flat in a good part of town and erected a cot in the room where she used to file her tax returns. It had indeed been a tough year and, only halfway through, Melissa had had enough.   Continue…

When our stepmother, Mandy, had been outside for more than half an hour, I knew something was wrong. When she was depressed, she usually would walk out of the apartment for a while, either for privacy or need of a less cramped space for a few minutes. But half an hour was a bad sign. My suspicions were confirmed when Dad told us that she was upset that we hadn't given her a Mother's Day card. He asked us to go apologize, and assure her that we were grateful for what she did as our second mother.   Continue…

They reside unseen in the tackle box
As we cast, troll, jig and tie our knots.
We rarely speak of patience,
Buried beneath the sinkers, leaders,
Crankbaits and flies.   Continue…

He lies naked in bed
Next to the half open window,
After a night too steamy for even a sheet.
He sits up and looks out at the new morning
Through peeling paint on the sash
And glazing torqued like frying bacon.
Rooftop silhouettes stand against
Another hazy summer sunrise
And steeples have already begun to squirm
In the searing heat.   Continue…

The wave spread out crept up
Slid back
Came back and licked my toes;
Ran out regrouped—
All silently except for sighing
On crusted sediments of shells.
Finding my feet the water laps,
Beneath my soles the shell-sand moves,
Pulled out scooped out and running with
The tide.
Warm the water, smell of gulf sea grass and fish—
A hint of salt and warm—
Wash me, wash me now.   Continue…

Late August, eclipsed moon—
silk-screened lunar light
that leavens shewbread—
                                           peace.

It's not yet white at the graying
temples of summer. Short-timer
hoppers spit shine the tallgrass.   Continue…

Folks still know how to love
with all their clothes on:

A red-tailed hawk holds a jack
rabbit's foot on the moonlit brink
of his fraidy hole. I recall the muffled
shriek of a field mouse pleading from
halfway down a rat snake;
                   the prairie never shouts.   Continue…

During the Cultural Revolution, I wrote a love letter
and was considered a criminal; I composed a love poem
and was persecuted as a counter-revolutionary.
I was arrested for living with my boyfriend outside of wedlock.
After we married, they dumped us way out in the countryside,
domiciled in communes where we were forced to sleep
in gender-segregated barracks without books or music
and with only a single thirty-minute conjugal visit per week.   Continue…

For godsakes, don't bring any casseroles over.
Send no condolences.
I hate Hallmark with a passion!   Continue…

We lie in the dust of those who came before us.
Filmy skins of past people's selves
roll in the sheets and sneak
kisses from our lips pursed tight
like balloon mouths
with the airings-out of past lives inside.   Continue…

She tried to follow you for several blocks, running
behind as you sped away, the old Asian couple tried
to wave you down, but you burst through stop signs,
doing sixty in a thirty. She kept running in the road
after you; until, panting, she slowed.   Continue…