My wife is holding my hand to her stomach, gently gliding my fingers just beneath her ribcage where two small feet have been kicking against skin. She is thirty-two weeks pregnant with our third child, due in early December, an Advent baby. Sitting on our bed, she guides my hand as if across a globe, across the smooth curving surface and down below her navel where our child’s head presses down. Every few seconds, we feel the rumble of small... Read more
Lady Bird finds its rhythm by the quick wit of its characters’ banter and succeeds especially because of its excellent performances. Director Greta Gerwig adds to characterization as she frames and arranges their relationships. Lady Bird and her mother have a memorable argument at the thrift store, and it’s as if they are nearly submerged in a clothing rack; at a high school party, we first see Kyle (Lady Bird’s boyfriend), alone, in a wide-angle shot by the pool; for... Read more
I graduated from Bellefonte Area High School in 2004. During my senior year, I indulged my role as a star basketball player, taking in all of the attention that came with it. I was careful, though, to reject the label of jock because I didn’t want to be perceived that way. I noticed the eyes on me during warm-ups, during the winning plays of a game, and in the hallways the day after a win. I tried to ignore those... Read more
The highways that snake down and around rural Iowa are dark. Enough that, if you are driving at the right time of night, and there isn’t a lot of traffic, you can catch moments of brilliance in the sky. Stars forever. An impossibly deep night. The opportunity to take a breath. My wife and kids were asleep, which isn’t uncommon. They share a gene that seems to be activated by getting into a car and travelling for more than an... Read more
As I read and re-read this poem, I enjoy noticing exactly when I’ve realize that it’s about the speaker’s pregnancy. If I know that “linea nigra” in the second verse is the dark line that appears on a pregnant belly from belly button downwards, then I’ve already caught on. If I don’t know this, I start suspecting the poem’s subject in verse three’s “germinal dark.” But who, still, is the “you” who begins to be addressed here? For me, it... Read more
I remember my mother used to go to bed for the day. The blackness of her mood seemed to darken her room. I don’t know why she left her door open. Maybe she knew, even in her unresponsive state, that she needed to be able to hear us. Maybe she thought it would be less frightening for us if we could see her. She was wrong. She loved us, but she was wrong. We learned not to talk to her.... Read more
Ross told the kids to stare at the splotchy red and blue picture and wait. A dozen elementary-school students tried to sit still long enough to just look. The image could have been a representation of Claude Monet’s last sight of his breakfast nook. Color without definition, intensity without concreteness, depth without distance. For some time, the kids squirmed in their seats, not “getting it,” and then at last one, then another, began to shout, “It’s doing something!” and “It’s... Read more
What keeps me from you: a meeting with human resources. What keeps me from you: I slept through the night to the dream of shopping. For a board. With wheels. Low to the ground. Lower than other boards. Lower to the ground than most kids. You can skate, you can roll, but you can’t fall. It’s almost impossible to lose your balance. Designed for an adult like me: stuck in a dream of youth. I slept all the way to... Read more
In a recent New York Times interview, pianist Steven Osborne discussed the strange experience of playing Olivier Messiaen’s composition “Vingt regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus,” strange because the twenty movements are entirely different creatures changing shape when experienced with different senses. The first movement, “Regard du Père,” comprises simple chords that build harmonic complexity interspersed with Messaien’s predilection for semiquavers, sixteenth notes with a dainty name that belies their barbarism. A semiquaver feels to me like someone reaching into my adrenal glands... Read more
Reflecting on a strange or disturbing story as a distant narrator can often have a lasting impact. This poem by Becca J.R. Lachman is eerie and curious—it may or may not have actually happened but her storytelling is powerful. From the title we know there has been an accident. We also are asked to “Imagine the night, the boy, the stallion,/all of them closing in, loose/for the first time in months.” Every other stanza holds a rich chain of words... Read more
Good Letters
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