My Mother's Kitchen

My Mother's Kitchen

Beneath the butcher-wrap paperlay Formica of gray with black flecks,and after my mother and her side-kick Anita finished wrapping T-bones, roundsteaks, sirloins, blade roasts and pot roasts,they lugged in a 20-gallon pail of ground chuck and slapped and laughed the...
On the Anniversary of Her Son's Suicide

On the Anniversary of Her Son's Suicide

So tell your story, each version more distantand yet … still fresh, never finished. No matter whether death was suddenor a gradual decline, devastation wraps itself as a binding and timeis a geometry of fractals, repetitions smaller … smaller … an intricacy that never...
Daily Reminders

Daily Reminders

You need to remind the mind over and over againto come back to quiet, to the dark hollows of where words and no wordsare found, like hunting morels in a forest. Be patient. It’s not an easy task.The mind doesn’t want togo there.It would rather grab the handlebars of a...
When the Great War

When the Great War

As my mother tells it,when the Great Warcame        my Great-GrandmotherGuarneschella lied. Datesare relative.                   Domenicowouldn’t be 16. Wouldn’t beconscripted. Didn’t matter.Ran away                with his cousinto the front at 14. Earned hima...
Scriptorium, by Melissa Range

Scriptorium, by Melissa Range

Melissa Range’s newest collection of poems, Scriptorium, brings together what seem to be disparate elements: medieval religious manuscripts, Old English literature, “hillbilly” stories from East Tennessee. They will come together—but you have to spend some time in...