Monthly Archives: April 2018

Love Letter in an Age of Aggrandizement Alexa, love, mute your horn. You’ll toot our ears out. I came of age, you understand, at the dawning of the age of Aquarius; and what that broke into, you remember, was less … Continue reading →

Stuck in Circles The lights are faulty in our kitchen. This is not a metaphor for my daughter who’s been two weeks and counting in the children’s psychiatric hospital – one day perfect, the next day broken. It’s a breaker … Continue reading →

Love in the Age of Alexa When Alexa dies Will I bury her in the backyard like a loved cat? Or will I put her on the mantelpiece Like an urn with ancestral ashes? Does she deserve an Alexa-shaped headstone? … Continue reading →

Come, Let’s Stroll Across the Floor Come to me in the silence of the night—from “Echo” by Christina Rossetti When the light goes off in the hall, my 1956 dictionary spreads itself wide open and the no-longer-used Words come to … Continue reading →

Silent Screen A message, not in a bottle, but on a palm-sized screen, sent off for an answer which has not yet arrived. Did it reach its destination? Or was it blown off course to float in an endless sea? … Continue reading →

I Object I’ve become my mother, my grandmother. I dodder, outpaced. AARP texts me. I can’t even, as the kids used to say, five decades ago. Hard boxes under my thin-skinned fingers. Concepts for which I can’t find words. Maybe … Continue reading →

In The Age of Alexa: Florescent Sun, Clock For A Heart They’ll never know, These children of the future, Our same silence again, The light on their leaf passes away, Small flowers between my fingers stay, While the luminescent moon … Continue reading →

Mouse Voice The phone gave you to me. It pulled a hundred voices over a line and left me yours. What did it say? Nothing I wanted to hear. A death laugh, a creaky plea for understanding when it had … Continue reading →

Love, Not Alexa Love, if you were like Alexa I could turn you on as easily as pressing a button whispering into your ear press another button to change channels when intimacy became too much to bear or press pause … Continue reading →

Shopping In the international market, a woman is asking for cardamom pods, chilies, those lovely yellow mustard seeds. In her buggy are chicken thighs, chard, lemons the size of my fist. Her toddler’s legs dangle and kick as he eyes … Continue reading →