The thing is: I can make this story hilarious. There are wild gesticulations and crocodile tears and three different voices, as well as a punch line about why Sober Tristan still has asthma. I can spin any of Drunk Tristan’s exploits until my listeners cry from laughter. Bits about Drunk Tristan kill. I didn’t quit drinking the first time I got thrown out of a bar, nearly thirteen years ago. The Devlins were playing an encore, and I decided to rush the stage and climb on an amp.
Movement Therapy
Soon you’ll see swans turn black with time, how their legs lengthen as their necks shrink.Allow them to trot on a countertop pecking for crumbs. And when you lose the keyto the antique cabinet hidden in your garage, ...
Sleeping between jobs while working on a degree
My son doesn’t believe that I sleep; he hearsthe computer keys sending Morse Code to my professors;By day he counts in Mandarin: 一 yī, 二 èr, 三 sān, 四 sì, 五 wŭ…at night he listens to me speak to a monitor;the computer screen lights the living roomlike a low hanging...
Lavender Sequence
i.We have misunderstood everything. But not severelyor as a mistake. And now we have gotten away with it.Sometimes, there is no need for consequence. Sometimes it is not up to anyone at all.The fool is making his rounds....
We Were Happy
“Now, when you go out of the house,” I say to my two new American students, “You move your object to the lower shelf.” I put the pewter fish on the lower desk shelf to show them. “You see? Here. I am the fish, so when I leave, I put it here.” The white girl is nodding, but the black one looks confused. Liz. Kiara. I must learn their names. “And when I come home, I put it again on the top shelf, like so.” I demonstrate. “Okay? You understand?”
Glossary for What You Left Unsaid: Loss
loss, n. 1. a fireplace heats your head | & the first house you lived stretches | your memory your past | childhood | at night— 2. you believed a fat man in a red suit brought you gifts —despite | you lied to your mother seven times that year...
Topography
There was no making me speak. I was stoic as the horse made of foil on my teacher's shelf. By spring I didn't want to go home most days, so I took the long way across the field and folded the pendulous throats of the first trumpet flowers, eyeing, just...
Fellowship
That should have been the end of it. An unexciting stop on an otherwise interesting journey. Unfortunately, I had not kept an eye on Ruby. While the rest of us had been gnawing fried bread and swatting flies, she had been chatting away with our hosts in a manner that was far too loose and animated to be strictly decent from a Kyrgyz perspective. They seemed taken with her — the man, his mother, his sisters, and his aunts. So taken that when we all stood up to go, they said she should stay.
The Dream of the Shepherd
You say the Shepherd waits all night for the dream to abate. But how could you know? In the painting He covers his face. Last week, I called to tell you that I wanted to die. This was not the first time. In the Shepherd's dream, the women are cast...