Cunningham had always assumed that the second of his three children, Rachel, would be the one to bury him—not dig the grave, of course, but make the funeral arrangements and see to the practical issues of contacting relatives, dealing with life insurance, and putting an obituary in the local newspaper. Maybe pick out his clothes for the long sleep. For no reason other than a hunch, he suspected that his wife, who'd always run the show for him and anyone else within reach of her tentacles, would choose the moment of his passing to feign grief-stricken paralysis. His son, Kevin, still yearning for the father he might have had but resenting the one he was unfortunately stuck with, would be too conflicted for action, while Beth Ann—his baby, his pet until the Big Falling Out—would be vindictive, triumphant. But Rachel had never been able to work up much emotion over Cunningham—or anyone else, as far as he could see. Skeptical amusement and wry detachment were about the most she could manage. She'd do his funeral like she'd do the dishes. Then she'd be out the door again, and they—whoever survived Cunningham—would get a call from her in another six months or a year: "Has it been that long? My my, time do fly when you're having fun."

When this most recent call came, though, here was no distant, ironical Rachel. She was crying, almost hysterical. She was in a Dallas motel, and she needed money. "These are hard times for me. I need a thousand dollars, bad."

Rachel turning up in Dallas, or anywhere else, was no great surprise; nor was her needing money. But Rachel crying? Cunningham was so unsettled that he couldn't connect the dots. Did she need the thousand dollars because of the motel bill? He didn't know how to respond, so he didn't try. He handed the phone to his wife.   Continue…

My mother called on a Sunday night. My eighty-six-year-old father had been moved from their apartment in the retirement community near Boston, where they'd lived for the last year, to the Full Care Wing of the same retirement community. "He couldn't get himself out of bed this morning," she said. "Every morning since the world began, he's jumped out of bed at first light as if his pajamas were on fire."

"You mean Assisted Care, don't you, Mom?" I said. There was no way my father would surrender to the helplessness of the Full Care Wing. He'd joked to me about the gradations when he showed me the brochure. "All aboard," he'd called and then listed the stations: "Independent, Assisted, Full, and Woops." Another time, he pretended to be angry that there wasn't a cemetery right on the grounds.

"Don't you, Mom? Assisted, right?"   Continue…

The four teenagers didn't notice Miguel crouched in the large garbage can in the alley. They couldn't see him, but through the small holes he'd cut in the side, he could see them clearly. He squeezed his eyes shut until he grimaced with pain when one of the boys threw gasoline on a small goat they'd stolen from the marketplace. The goat struggled to escape, but he couldn't stand; the boys had broken two of its legs. The biggest teenager fumbled with the wooden match; his movements were ragged after a long afternoon of sniffing gasoline. On the fourth try, when Miguel heard the harsh snap of the matchstick, his eyes flew open in fear and dread. He watched silently as orange-red flames appeared to erupt from the small animal's writhing body. Miguel could block the sight but not the sounds of the goat's desperate, high-pitched bleating mixed with the teens' laughter as they danced around the dying animal. He knew the smell of burning flesh would stay with him for many days.

Miguel stayed in the can long after the boys stumbled down the alley. The acrid fumes of spent gasoline and the heart-wrenching smell of the blackened young goat smothered the hunger that Miguel had carried with him since early that morning. The cramps in his curled-up legs told him he shouldn't stay much longer, but he couldn't bring himself to leave the protection of the garbage can.

While he sat silently, Miguel tried to force back the blanket of memories of the time before when he lived with his seven brothers on the outskirts of San Miguel. When Miguel first came to the streets, he spent many hours re-living his earlier life until he discovered that remembering what he had left behind made it harder to face what was in front of him. He would often wonder aloud, in the stillness of the sunrise, why he worked so hard just to wake up to another day that would be the same as all the others. It was not a good life for a boy who had just reached his twelfth birthday, but for almost two years now, it was the only life Miguel knew.   Continue…

Sherm sat at the bar getting sloshed with Lenny. It was Lenny's first Friday at the lab and tradition dictated that the battery techs take him to Malachy's. These welcome-to-LabTech parties had run late in the past, but never this late; it was already after midnight.

Sherm had been drinking slowly, as was his custom. Beer tasted too good to rush. Schaefer was his favorite, followed by Pabst. He was flying pretty high right now. He looked around. Crowded as usual for a Friday night. But the assassination of Martin Luther King yesterday and today's riots infused the bar with a somber buzz.

He looked up at the television bolted to the wall above the highest shelf of liquor. The flickering grey images showed James Brown spinning and whirling in front of the Garden crowd. Sherm tapped his fingers along the bar, feeling the beat. He glanced at the set at the other end of the bar. Close-up of a black man. Sherm couldn't say who—so many black men on television these days. The image flipped to King behind a podium, then to a still shot of the motel in Memphis where he'd been shot. Then video of flames erupted on the screen, stores and homes on fire, black men throwing rocks through windows, mounted police trying to restore order.

Sherm turned away and looked around the bar, measured the possibility of the violence spilling from the screen into the neighborhood, the city. Maybe it was a mistake to come out tonight.   Continue…

It's Tuesday night and I'm on the risers again, my flute in my lap as Mr. Giuglialmi chews us out. We've been rehearsing the prologue from West Side Story, which is so gorgeous it can lift you right out of the galaxy, but he says we sound like cars crashing. This is mostly the brass players' fault. On each run-through they manage to nail the opening notes, but before we get through the first page of the score, they lose the beat and off we go into that pile-up.

"Are you even reading the music?" Mr. G. asks. He's peering over his glasses at the trumpeters, who answer by blowing spit out of their horns onto the floor. I'm one of the few people who dare to look at Mr. G. while he corrects us, because so far I haven't committed any mistakes. I've never played this piece before, but I've listened to it so many times that I know exactly where it's supposed to go.

"Take a minute and count it out," says Mr. G. Feet tap behind me, mouths whisper beats. I glance around at the trombonists' bloated lips and ask myself what I'm doing here. This is the symphonic band, a cut above the regular high school band because it requires auditions and the kind of commitment most people can't be bothered with when they're 16, and yet here I am, halfway committed at best. And there's Mike on the top riser, his sax strung around his neck, dutifully counting as he squints at his score. I've been dating him since shortly after I moved back here to Pennsylvania a year ago, but I don't like to admit that that's what I'm doing. He sees me looking at him and smiles. I turn away and stare at Mr. G.'s goatee.  Continue…

It's all preparation for leaving.
You never really forget this.

That bright summer day at Watch Hill, the two of you
riding The Flying Horse Carousel,
the oldest carousel in the country—   Continue…

Only while moving do we
know the joys of

examining what has
always been   Continue…

Lavish storm in pre-dawn dark, raindrops
fat as wedding rings bounce and explode
on the roof and deck and many windows
of this rented seaside house.   Continue…

Here is an old car frame, bone-white paint
with osteoclastic rust and specks of metastasis,
black in a blasted pattern. It's hollowed out, holey—
door- and windowless—a skull; some Eastern bloc
brand, imported to the third-world and terrorist states.   Continue…

It's the darker half of the evening. The grass
of my apartment building's yard
is the rain-fed shade
of the Ireland I know
from photographs, its distant
hills like ancient mounds
of shallow graves. A fog
glides down their slopes
like a stingray on the seafloor   Continue…

I spent the afternoon unraveling my funeral silk
            checking for holes within the
careful quiltings and nattered threads,
            woven beginnings collected strand by strand

Gently my fingers coddle and soothe nervous fabric
            once bound to disorderly flesh gowned in reddest red
eagerly testing truth in the backseat of the Dodge
            strengthening the burn   Continue…

The figure on a bridge against the sun, the man
with the cigarette held in front
of the solitary lamp, how simplified they seem—   Continue…

How lucky musicians are. Tonight
a saxophone sounds tentative notes
somewhere on my street, as if tuning up,
and the whole neighbourhood seems
to hush itself. The phone rests in my hand,   Continue…

It was during a summer that lasted
long enough to be noticed. Back when we were young
and still sensitive to the seasons. The sun was flickering
through the dense tree line along our path,
warming our bodies the best it could. We rode
our bikes through the wood, away from all the things we knew.   Continue…

I used to imagine that sentiments would overtake me and
That I would be flush with others in a wash towards the shore.
But I have been more flotsam than jetsam.

I have parted particulate matter on the surface of the sea and
Nearly missed becoming a whale's wayfaring passenger
In a course toward the poles.   Continue…