“Which one is Mother? How you know das her name? Long time ago get all kine rules: who can go graveyard, who no can. Depend on how old you stay. Da pa-kes get anykine rules. Mostly superstition. I no believe but if somebody tell you someting, if you no follow and den someting bad happen,…

Propped up against the headboard She calmly smoothes the cotton sheet With knarled arthritic fingers, Examining the faded flower pattern. In lucid moments she tells me that I look so much like my father. “He was the handsomest man I ever met.” And then there are those days she claims Someone has stolen her purse,…

Penning “2018” on my water bill payment, I realize it’s been fifty years, a full half-century. If not now, when? That novel of social and personal revolution, summer 1968. Better get to it. Staring absent-mindedly at the browning hulk of Douglas fir, I see needles and branches, lights and ornaments, all dry and brittle. Like…

I approach the medical receptionist’s desk with my 84-year-old mother. We are at her primary care doctor’s office, on the third floor of the medical group’s building. She’s scheduled for her Medicare wellness exam. Yesterday I accompanied her to her podiatry appointment, watched her callouses get peeled away like the skin of a potato. I…

Everybody like fo walk around Chinatown on New Year’s Day, no mo nothing fo do, no mo money. Dey like go stand outside da window, watch da cook chop char siu, whole roast duck, make everybody like eat. We walk past da market an see rambutan, lychee, ripe yellow mangoes, wish we could taste. We…

Winter Winter comes when a woman goes cold on you when the butterfly leaves your hand and when the hummingbird no longer stands still and when nothing rests on a bare branch.

Once a month, get air raid drill. When you hear da siren, you gotta hide under your desk and put your head on da ground j’like praying at da temple. Andrew tell spooky kine stuff from undah his desk, “Dey going bomb our skoo. Pheeew, boom!” Shirley, she bigger den Andrew, but he can make…

Mom kept many gallons of water under the staircase. I watched her eyedropper eight careful drops of bleach into each bottle, wondering how the water would taste. She said if I had time, I should go across campus to Bilger Hall. There was a fallout shelter in the basement. If there was no time, she…

Dawn breaks as I near the trail’s end, My dogs, driven by impatience, eager for their treats, Drop their heads and slow. Up ahead, an old woman stands like an apparition. Myopic eyes squint toward the horizon, Veined, knotted hands grip the handles of her walker. Eyes shine from hooded lids, A crinkled grin, her…

Or is that plural: The walls have ears? Or both? Or neither? (How could a wall have ears?) Listen, I’ll tell you how. A recent Star-Advertiser story said our President will now allow parts of elephants to be brought into our country as trophies. One wonders which parts? Tusks, certainly. Entire heads? Unlikely. Too unwieldy….