You squat over the lip of a sidewalk, your tiny feet separated for proper balance. When it rains, the worms are freed from flowerbed soil. They always, always emerge to swim in the collecting waters. You’re a social worker, a professional strictly scheduled to work on rainy mornings in a pair of purple cotton pants …
A Summer Blackout
Baba’s faults were pouched in me, so red and erratic that they had blown the power in the northeastern half of the country. From our stoop, we feel the night sponging up the heat wave. The concrete steps practice prose on my thighs.
Mrs. Honig
I think all you wanted by then was to feel the tuft of a paintbrush along your fingers. The cold, pressed hospital sheets blotted your sweat. You seeped air from a slack upper lip. Mrs. Honig, there was nothing wrong with dusk—yawning open like Georgia’s last blossom, swallowing you with wet acrylic on your heels.