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ESSAYS

June 15, 2011

PAPA, YOU’RE STILL DEAD–(added November 27, 2011)

Be strong, They say.  Be brave.  Be a rock.  Don’t cry.  Cry if you need to.  Everything’s going to be fine.  Don’t worry.  These things make you stronger.  It’s better this way.  He’s in a better place now.  I’m sorry.  But everything happens for a reason.  Miracles happen every day, They say.  We’re praying for him.  He’ll be fine, They say.  Now you have an angel looking down on you from heaven.  At least he lived a good life.  At least he didn’t suffer.  He knew how much you loved him.  He’ll always be with you.  You didn’t really lose him, They say.  He lives in you.  Don’t cry.  It will be okay.  Time heals all things, They say.  Just give it time.

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THE POMEGRANATE KING–(added September 27, 2011)

Pomegranates are indigenous to the middle world, that strait of land we now call Iran, reaching its shoulder up into the Mediterranean and bumping its back side into Pakistan.  From this Fertile Crescent the fruit traveled, through either accidental or purposeful means of cultivation, both east and west, dropping its fine seed into the dry, deep soil of Turkey, Afghanistan, and India.  One thinks of camels, brightly colored silks, young, dark slaves and bundles of curled cinnamon.

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SONATA–(added July 22, 2011)

I.

For months, the movie screen of my mind featured the same scene—my father’s face against a white hospital sheet—over and over and over again.  Skin turns sallow and loses elasticity remarkably fast.  Either a body is living or it is not.

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MIXED–(added June 15, 2011)

I LET MY SOUTHERN ACCENT go in college.  In truth, I deliberately un-cultivated it.  A few  weeks of “Where are you from?” and “What kind of accent is that?” and I was ready to un-mark myself, strip my voice of what had begun to feel a flashing neon sign of embarrassing otherness.  My accent wasn’t the right kind of different, wasn’t the kind one can parade flirtatiously at a dorm room party; “I’m from Tennessee” hardly connotes sexy or exotic.

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