My mother may she rest in peace would say that all diseases come from the weather colds and fevers and sneezes and rashes and head ache and heart ache and pangs of conscience and weak knees and back pain and…
Poetry
Mother, in Love at Sixty
by Claire • • 0 Comments
Reason number one it can’t work: his name is Bill. For god’s sake, he hunts. He has no pets, other than two doting daughters, and his ex-wife is still alive. He’s simply not my type. Who wants to get married…
ADVICE FROM THE PREDECESSOR’S WIFE
by Claire • • 0 Comments
Learn Arabic—your husband won’t have time. At Carrefour Express, aisle one is the tax-free line. For poultry, go to Sweifieh (the Palestinian chicken man’s shop); pig, on the other hand, is impossible to find (frozen pork sometimes turns up at…
Wife’s Disaster Manual
by Claire • • 0 Comments
When the forsaken city starts to burn, after the men and children have fled, stand still, silent as prey, and slowly turn back. Behold the curse. Stay and mourn the collapsing doorways, the unbroken bread in the forsaken city starting…
Like Two Negative Numbers Multiplied by Rain
by Claire • • 0 Comments
Lie down, you are horizontal. Stand up, you are not. I wanted my fate to be human. Like a perfume that does not choose the direction it travels, that cannot be straight or crooked, kept out or kept. Yes, No,…
Mountain Dew Commercial Disguised as a Love Poem
by Claire • • 0 Comments
Here’s what I’ve got, the reasons why our marriage might work: Because you wear pink but write poems about bullets and gravestones. Because you yell at your keys when you lose them, and laugh, loudly, at your own jokes. Because…
Opus Posthumous
by Claire • • 0 Comments
When I painted, everybody saw. When I played piano, everybody heard. I ate your raspberries. The sign no trespassing applied to me. Now, the hemlocks have grown higher than the house. There’s moss on my stoop, a little mildew In…
