Works

Kayaking the Charles gave me a whole new perspective (The Boston Globe)

The winter before last, my husband and I decided that we would kayak the entire Charles River. The plan was an antidote to bad-weather blues, something to dream about while we were trapped indoors. We wanted to venture beyond the routes we had already paddled. Read more

Quantum Blues (Ghost City Review) *Fiction

I hid behind a trash can when Schrödinger cornered me in the alley. His gloved hands found me anyway—how could they not? This is his thought experiment. He picked me up under the ribs and folded me into the crook of his elbow, gripping my back paws. He patted my head, said “Nice kitty.” I let him carry me into his lab. What else could I do? When Schrödinger lifted me into the air, I stared into his chalk-scrawled blackboard, occult rills of numbers tangled with letters and tridents and triangles. I looked down into the maw of a steel box. Read more

The Middle Seat (Levee) *Fiction

6 a.m., middle seat, hopelessly awake. The man in the window seat has blinded himself with an eye mask and collared himself with a neck pillow, and he is breathing peacefully. I am angled to avoid his sleepy shoulder, too alert to sleep, too tired to work. The aisle seat woman is flipping channels on her seatback screen. I hold my right arm tight to avoid her arm. Buy print journal

Refuge (Kestrel) *Fiction

There are only so many places to go around here so it was nothing unusual to see Tom walking toward me in the Walmart parking lot. But it was quite a surprise to see him with a girl who looked to be about twenty, much younger than poor old Tom. [Print only]

Your Alternative Guide to Wild Mushrooms (Response) *Fiction

Amanita Virosa, “Destroying Angel”

Take this as an IOU—I Owe You a Housewarming gift.

I’ll start there. You’d laugh if you saw me practicing to write you, but I can’t ruin this mushroom card. It was the only one of its kind in a bin of ‘70s stationery in an antique barn in the Hudson Valley. That’s where I was when I texted you a photo of the hat rack, the jockey cap that would have looked cute on you. Buy print journal

Sea Caves (Meridian)

My husband and I read the waiver for the kayaking expedition while we wait for the ferry. The legalese starts out whimsical, warning of large or erratic waves…and the possibility that I/we will be jolted, jarred, bounced, thrown to and fro and shaken about. The prose dims from there: rescue and medical treatment may not be immediately available, and [p]rolonged exposure to cold water can result in hypothermia and in extreme cases, death. The shipwreck scene in Ovid’s Metamorphoses puts it more bluntly: There is death in every wave. [Print only]

First Metamorphosis (Ghost Parachute) *Fiction

My introduction to cruelty came from the boy who lived across the street. He shouted to me from his side yard, and I followed him to a patch of dirt freshly planted with petunias. Their velvety purple flounces drew my eye to the core of darkness at the bud. Some petals were ripped, disturbing the symmetry that funneled my gaze. The boy squatted. He reached between the petunias, looking for something in the undergrowth, and I sat next to him on the path of wide flat stones. I was just old enough to know to pull my skirt down over my knees. Read more

It was the perfect embryo, full of possibility (The Boston Globe)

The glossy photo of a circle full of circles gave us hope. We never once believed, as the Alabama Supreme Court recently rule, that we were gazing at an ‘extrauterine child.’ Read more

Runner’s High (Anti-Heroin Chic)

I hate running; running is my last hope. I will learn to love running because that will prove I can change. In my loftier moments this becomes a testament to the human capacity for change. Read more

Utopia Lost (Arrowsmith Press)

People go to Clifton’s Cafeteria to see the place that inspired Walt Disney to build Disneyland. They go to soak in the atmosphere that helped Ray Bradbury imagine life on other planets. Clifton’s is a trippy Los Angeles legend that served cafeteria food to everyone from Charles Bukowski to the mom from Lassie. I didn’t seek it out for the usual reasons; I turned up there because they let my grandpa sleep in the alley behind the kitchen during the Great Depression. Read more