New Writing at Webdelsol

A Female Sentence

The form that draws me takes the sentence as basic. Declarative, interrogative, exclamatory. The potent imperative: Sit.

This bulk, squat upon the page—I take it to heart.

We who practice form measure value in single words like coins. The resonant clink as they spill, the metallic gleam of a story franked upon each face. Accents that change with climate, determination by position. Inflected, inflicted. Fashion, fascia.

Mourn the passing of lyric I, her stillborn mouth and barked fingertips. A novice eager to suffer, to learn the disciplines all the while shrieking praisesong to words with an ancient root.

Sweet savor extinguished—betrayal and division, the weave of life unraveled into the heavy Chain of Being. Cabinet of curios, specimen jars and dainty drawers, narrow slots, an exquisite box.

How to sustain a voice; and why, when the chance is rare. Fleeting.

[First published as "Serving Time" on Web del Sol]

Destiny Measured in Cups

Total immersion is one thing. Going under quite another.
Sex changes everything—Bloody Kansas, Missouri's compromise, the rate of exchange.
We escaped our mothers' fate, the Nembutal and Crisco, Miltown and rocket bras.
Their Meriwether a Miss America who died young, big hair and one sitcom to her name.

Laying By

Good long enough, the saints take to canning, gather sleevesful of inky beets and a cowlsweight of squash. Basil stalks tucked behind their ears in ungodly flirtation as they avoid the prick of blackberry brambles. Brine the new wine of consecration, kettles huff on a great stove, the easy chatter of jars as they boil, amiable as martyrs. Ancient boards sag beneath the weight of pickles and jams cooling in a dark refectory, a place of grave sustenance shocked by the levity of popping seals, of the immodest venting of air. Seductive color the sudden garnish to a bland diet of grain and shade.

Ah, sisters, a conspiracy of fruits! Pray that we might know the swooning stain of plump berries.

The saints assess their stock—seed, root, pod and rind. All in good order, the abundance preserved against a coming pain, the uncertain leap, the mysterious seam between here and there. A sacrament, surely, of rupture and awe.

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