The wedding was tomorrow, the first Saturday in October, at our Methodist church right here in Magnolia Grove, South Carolina, a beautiful town and true to its name. It was full of huge, ancient magnolia trees. They made the grand houses look even grander and hid the pokey little houses behind their broad, shiny leaves. I loved the ivory-colored flowers that bloomed in late spring and early summer. But I liked the fall better, like now, when it wasn't so hot, and the magnolias lost some of their long leaves, which had turned brown and crisp and crunched when you walked on them.

My dress was a pretty white pinafore. Aunt Rose, who expected brides to wear something shiny and stiff, opened her eyes big when she saw it. "Glory, that get-up looks like nothin' but a sundress some girl from the other side of the tracks would wear."

I had been a burden to Aunt Rose ever since I turned twelve and learned from Rev. Weems that "God loves you just as you are."

"He didn't mean you should be a stubborn mule," Aunt Rose said often. She came to live with me here in our house, which was neither grand nor pokey, after my mother died having a little stillborn boy named Ronnie. Daddy moved to Mexico. He sends us money every month.   Continue…

"Fifi!" Darlene shrieked. "You're alive!" Tommy and Rebekah froze. They had been poking through cattails, looking for buried treasure. Fifi had disappeared earlier that summer and everyone thought she was dead: gnarled, drowned, and mangled, washed up in some lonely ravine.

Fifi hobbled out from a mound of debris like a zombie staggering out of its crypt. She was damp and smelled of decaying leaves. Patches of hair were missing from the small of her back, and she was caked in mud up to her belly.

When Fifi saw the kids, she froze too. They stared at each other for several minutes.

Fifi meowed and sat gingerly down, breaking the spell.

"Fiiii-fiiiii!" Tommy cried, running to her and scooping her up in his arms. Fifi had always been "Tommy's cat," and he had been the most affected by her disappearance. Fifi meowed again and purred audibly.

The kids danced around her, welcoming home the prodigal cat. They bathed her and tended her wounds, carefully dabbing each cut and scrape with witch hazel and iodine. Rebekah even snuck her best blanket, the green crocheted afghan her grandmother had made her, outside to make Fifi a bed. The stories the kids told of her adventures rivaled Alice's trip through the looking-glass. Fifi reveled in the attention, taking on the air of a queen.   Continue…

An old, tattered sofa lay at the curb, and Sheila, one of the Irish girls who lived in the apartment below Larry, was coming down the driveway, a garbage bag in hand. "How's it going, boy?" There was a trashcan near the sofa and she tossed the bag in as he crouched down to put on the leash. "Your dog is deadly," she said, and she dropped herself onto the sofa. He explained that Jeb, a mutt who looked a cross between a cocker spaniel and terrier, didn't belong to him. He was watching him because Claudette had gotten a summer internship with Belvedere, a lifestyle magazine in New York, and her building didn't allow pets.

Looking up at him, her blue eyes peering over thick-rimmed glasses, she said, "Where in New York is your girl?"

"The West Side."

"Em, I haven't been out of Boston much, but I know a thing or two." She reached down to rub Jeb's floppy ears. "My cousin Hughie's on 96th and Amsterdam. He works at a pub on 79th. He says it's a good place, but the work . . . well, it's murder."

He pointed to the sofa. "Is that yours?"

"Aye. I had a delivery this morning, a new one, grand altogether. And I'm glad to be getting rid of this old thing, but I changed me mind about where I want the new one." She was wearing a crucifix necklace and she began tugging at it. "Would it be too much for ye to come in and help me move it?"   Continue…

I work at the recycling center. Sorting bodies. Shoveling lime. Jewelry in plastics tubs. Unscrew artificial hips. They leach heavy metals. Wear rubber gloves with the chain saw. Watch for parasites. The big, jelly ones crawl right up your leg. And be sure to check for dentures. Those can clog the exhaust fans.

The stench is crippling. Physically and emotionally. You never get used to it. I wear a Motörhead T-shirt around my nose and mouth. Borrowed it from a putrefied biker. I soak the T-shirt in gasoline. Fumes block the odor. Numb my feelings. The dead stare me down.

Keep your filthy hands off me.

Yellow glaze to their skin. Caustic excretions. Lymph nodes inflamed. Bellies full of pus. Water on the brain. Leaking brown fluid from the ears and eyes. I use a garden hose to bathe them.   Continue…

I'm making breakfast, and every few minutes or so I look through the kitchen window at my daughter. Her back is turned so she doesn't notice me watching. She is getting dirt on her new sundress, and picking dandelions to make wishes with. She turns her head to the right and I see her mouth moving as she talks and hands a fistful of flowers to the air. Only to see them drop quickly to the ground. Her tiny hands find her hips and she gently scolds the empty air. Scooping up the flowers, she turns around and raises her eyes to see me watching from the window.

Her eyes are different from most people. One is brown like dark maple syrup, and the other is blue, like arctic ice. Her dark brown eye is perfect, but her blue eye is damaged, and she would be blind if not for her brown eye. She smiles at me and I see her frosty blue eye sparkle in the sunlight. I slide the window open.

"Come inside for pancakes!"

Her little legs start the long journey towards the kitchen door. Halfway there she turns back and beckons for someone to follow, but the yard is empty.   Continue…

I show my ID to the guard and step up the stairs into the weather-worn shack with its peeling gray paint. I scan the wall for my time card and grab "James Boyd—Snowman #4," punch it in the time/date clock, and return the card to its space on the rack marked "Santa Unit." I step out of the shack, a portal really, and into the bright sun of Disneyland's parade back lot. The Mary Poppins unit chimney sweeps, who have had years of dance and gymnastic training and invariably show up to rehearsals in parachute pants and leg warmers, stretch and practice their gymnastics. The haughty "glock" girls—despised because, though they are hired for their long legs and ample bosoms, they are paid musician union wages because Disney has taught them to play their glockenspiels—are already in the That Girl wigs with their perfect flips. I scan for the other snowpeople, and find them huddled together, laughing about something. For most of them, like me, this is their first parade, and though our parts are not as prestigious as the chimney sweeps or the "glock" girls, we snowpeople are nonetheless proud that for our parts we still dance, unlike the six boys cast as Christmas trees who merely push their tinsel pyramids from the inside, sway, and blink their lights on and off—or the toy soldiers who can barely march with all that metal on them.

We have been learning and practicing our Christmas routines around the back lots of the park for hours and hours on the weekends for the past month, and finally this Thanksgiving weekend is our big debut. We chat excitedly, wondering aloud what it will be like to dance inside our costumes instead of in our street clothes. Our costumes, the snowpeople are told, are being completely redesigned and constructed for this season. New, solid, rounded costumes are to replace the previous rather mod, '70s, soft-sculpture ones. The designers and workshops have been running late, so we have had to be content with conceptual drawings while the others in our unit—the dancing reindeer, their tongues hanging out of their goofy heads, and those damned "glock" girls with their red and white fur-trimmed minidresses, coiffed wigs, and silver glockenspiels—have been prancing around fully dressed for weeks.   Continue…

      bust by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, c. 1638-1648 (Article in Wikipedia)

The master's chisel captures transformation,
Beauty's innate capacity to appall:
Lips slightly parted in mute supplication,
Long hair become a savage serpent-scrawl.   Continue…

      Paris, 1979

This guy approaches, gaunt and badly shaven,
Proffers a soiled photo urgently.
It's very late—11:57—
The empty platform echoes eerily.   Continue…

The tall autistic boy spits on my head—
A gesture more confounding than disgusting—
One way he makes frustrations felt instead
Of speaking. But he has no trouble trusting   Continue…

To feast on silence
She sat for hours staring at a cherry tree

The table she sat at
Grows longer
Every day it snows   Continue…

1
The water calls us into its cold
           like a deranged mother
whose arms choke because she cannot
           hug or hold.
Something is wrong with the sunlight
           and it is our fault.
(We came with our shadows from
           New York.)   Continue…

Set me on fire
                       with your
                              velvet fingers
                                     caress me
                                        with your curious
                                             lips unlace my
                                                 fettered finery.   Continue…

The snow says, "You think that death is cold, cold
as the metal stirrups in the half-dark hospital room
where the intern, looking at your ultrasound,
announced, 'spontaneous abortion.'

But she was warm inside your body for those ten days
when your cravings ceased, your skin's glow dimmed,
your breasts slept quiet in your C cups.   Continue…

And here below the glowing sun
And here upon this spacious height
The satellite in hurtled run
An astronaut in weightless flight

And over Stonehenge's gaping ring
The battered rock and open gate
Up in the darkness silence sings
There ruined stone has yet to wait   Continue…