With gratitude to the poets whose poems gave me this. The poems left in me a room in which every suffering has a different smell, five summers and five long winters, boatloads of thuya, and silence on a peak in Darien. The poems left in me grass all blowing in the same direction, twenty seven bathers and one woman, one yearning woman, watching from behind curtains, and angel-headed hipsters on negro streets at dawn searching for an angry fix. The... Read more
When the creamy, letter-press-printed wedding invitation arrived on a wintry February day, it seemed an opportunity too good to pass up: The groom was a childhood friend who had been longing for a bride ever since our college days. A quarter-century later, he finally found her. The wedding was in Mississippi, and I could visit my beloved, Jackson-based older brother without husband and children in tow, for two days afloat and unmoored, a single girl again. I pulled the credit... Read more
Guest Post By Cathy Warner I’d only known her a month when Blythe called with a problem: The family puppy had parvo. She needed money. Would I pay her twenty-five dollars in exchange for a massage? Blythe lived in a run-down cabin up the road from our remodeled cabin. She had three grubby kids whose noses always ran, a grimy husband who drove a rusty van, and was missing two teeth (my eyes always focused on the gaps). I didn’t... Read more
As a retort to the old saying that “a New Englander never uses ten words when one will do,” I’ve heard it said that “a Southerner never uses one word when ten will do.” I’m proof of the latter. I’ve got a big mouth and have gotten into trouble using it for most of my life. “You sure do talk a lot.” “You shouldn’t have said that.” “Why do you ask so many questions?” These are common observations by my... Read more
My daughter’s teeth were clenched from the brain tumor and so I would hold her for hours and dribble protein drink through their crevices with a thin-rimmed yellow sippy cup. Most would spill out, but some went in, and so this is how we stretched out her life. To what end I am unsure, beyond suffering. When it is your child you have no choice, you can no more let her die than cut your own throat. Sometimes when I... Read more
Guest Post By Shannon Huffman Polson 1. Drive down unmarked road in rental car to a quiet circular drive. Try to ignore the weight of undefined expectations. 2. Wish that expectations were defined. By you or someone else. 3. Push away the thought that the name on the back of the stone is the same as your name. 4. Take a deep breath. Before opening the car door, flex your stomach muscles in case memories come at you kicking. 5.... Read more
I want to write a beautiful story. I want my reader to cry when the story has ended, not from sadness, but because she wished the story could continue. I want her to wish for a sequel, but at the same time to feel the story was complete. I want my characters to be noble, and then ignoble, and then truly noble after all: the kind of characters that learn from their mistakes and then go on to be heroes.... Read more
Ask my wife: I’ve been known to be a sucker for some fairly wooden programming on the likes of A&E, National Geographic, and the History Channel when they turn their attention to the Bible. Proof of Noah’s Ark on Mt. Ararat? I’m in. The revolt at Masada? Fire up the popcorn. If it’s possible to make a disclaimer, it would be that at least these programs—or at least the ones for which I have a soft spot—have been more in... Read more
Our neighbor Jack is a retired widower. He goes to a mainline Baptist church. It’s a massive structure on the edge of what some here call the ghetto. Years ago this big church saw the majority of its members take flight to suburban churches with coffee shops and rocking praise bands. But there is, in that magisterial building, a haggard group of diehards trying to continue on, trying to fulfill the calling to love their neighbors. Jack is one of... Read more
“He blessed us.” Craig’s eyes twinkle, his mouth twitches. I recognize the man I fell for, the man whose face still stuns me with love. He’s a gentle tease, and for the past few weeks, these three words have formed a refrain: He blessed us. The former pope, that is—Benedict XVI, whose general audience at St. Peter’s Square we attended back in October 2011 and who, after his homily on the Twenty-third Psalm, offered a blessing to “the young people,... Read more
Good Letters
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