Stilts
For my 6th birthday, my Father made them of scrap wood—two by fours, both four feet long, with chocks of wood to stand on.
HANDYMAN
My Great Uncle Hugo’s tool shed tilted toward the edge of the hill.
EASTER 1946
She studies a photo. In Sunday-best, the family layered up the front steps, eyes unseeing. Her son encased shoulder to foot in his Daddy’s army jacket.
Out of Thin Air
One of the last two steamships fitted with sails, huge spread of canvas, three steel masts to court the wind, she delivered my father’s family to the new world, from the cargo hold called ‘Tween Decks the space reserved for rudder controls...
International Studies, 1967
On our way to breakfast,we meet a small pigtethered to a tree.We name her Pinkand greet her daily,until she is servedat evening meal.
September Song
Twice a week after lunch, clutching the lesson book to her chest, she leaves her third-grade class, and marches up the hall to the music room. She’ll spend half an hour with Sister Yvonne.
The Conundrum
By Jean Cassidy and published in “The New Depressus” in The Guardian US edition, August 19.2017
The Root and the Bud
— After “To the Fig Tree on 9th and Christian” by Ross Gay
Meandering upthe street oblivious mymind full of jabberwockyand inattentive to what’surgent what’sbroken whatneeds to be fixed
Absecon on the Bass River
After landfall in Atlantic City, the snow hurricane of 1804,with its extra-tropical up-reach of clouds unleashed torrentsof frozen rain that went to powder, and became a violent whiteout.Crystal drifts called firn, turned into hard pack, firm enough...
The Significance of Apple
Apple is as apple does—a working fruitkeeping doctors away, shines in a lover’s eye,moderates kraut’s sauer, and providescinnamon a permanent place to wallow.
Rolling out of children’s half-hitched backpacks downterrazzo hallways in the Midwest,...