Breadcrumb #645

LUCINDA KEMPE

The poet sent a photograph of “frost-sad” primroses growing in his English garden. 

“Today is your fuck day,” my husband said earlier. 

This is what he says every Friday. It is a game he plays. I sent the poet a reply photograph titled “Primroses in a pot on plates” only to realize they were cyclamens after I’d sent the Tweet. 

I’m losing my mind. 

Snow fell overnight, a bare inch and a half, enough to powder the ground. My hellebore, planted next to the cesspool, sometimes blooms in winter. My Manx made a fast, morning dash into the yard, almost invisible but for the gray fur heart on his side. I named him Dart, which suits his manner and his coat. He had a tail when he arrived, but lost it to cancer. 

Jenny Diski died of cancer last April, not long after finishing her book. The poet is holding a reading in her honor in London on January 12th. I won’t be attending. 

I’m planted on this side of the Atlantic, waiting, watching a gray heart gamboling in snow.

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Breadcrumb #644

RACHEL LAVERDIERE

Light a jasmine-scented candle before you begin with shelves to house books to inform thoughts. Then paint the walls aquamarine and free a kaleidoscope of butterflies that’ll flutter past shelves encrusted with seashells. Pepper the room with an explosion of feathers. Toss in a cat for good measure. 

Let the cat crouch on all fours, and she’ll become your personal temptress. Let her purvey secrets & provide stolen thrills while she lounges on embroidered pillows. Keep a caged monkey to promote inspiration and to give voice to all beaus & husbands & sons trapped by earthly desires. Give him an apple to remember the fall. 

Forgo electric lights and melt jasmine-scented candles by the dozens. This will cleanse impure fancies and invite a return to pure thought. Adhere mirrors to each surface to ensure your pursuance of Truth.

Caress the seashells & comfort your monkey. Seek out the cat & drift into the possibilities offered by her embroidered pillows.   

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Breadcrumb #634

MAURA LEE BEE

after the transfer, head filled with Etta James and Carole King, i find myself across from three women on the blue bench. large plastic bags protrude between their legs. matching bright sneakers. scarf tied like a gift. one tells a story with her hands and they all giggle like children. she continues with her joke, hand gently pressing on her friend’s shoulder. her companion at the end of the row leans in. their laughter is a burst in the quiet car, joy with wild abandon. 

the music stopped long ago, and i can’t help but notice the empty seat next to them. coincidence? or are they saving it for someone? i imagine a fourth with them, shoulders hunched, a red-lipped mouth streaked with tears from laughter. long fingers wrapped around a paper bag’s handle. hair tousled from the wind on their morning shopping. enraptured by a story from the day before. 

i like to think we’ll get like this—sun-kissed on the El, roses on our coats. laughing about some story from long ago or just yesterday. hair tied back or gone white early. denim jackets fading on a too cold day. taking that last sip of coffee from bodega breakfast, waiting for the next train. never pausing for the announcements. and i think, we’ll save a seat for her. joy between us together.

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Breadcrumb #463

PAUL SUNDBERG

The Sidewalk is impossibly narrow, walkable only by one, or two in single file, or me and a dog on a long leash, and the sort of cat that follows freely for a while just to irritate that leashed dog.

But, it’s suburbia and no one was ever supposed to walk on it really - everyone driving or being driven - the concrete ribbon meant only to lift to just the right height the wheels of lawn-mowers dutifully driven on late Saturday mornings, or to stabilize the Monday through Friday afternoon wheels of the tricycle driving toddlers (honestly, no one could wait to drive) watching for the big kids to get off the bus.

It was rolled out in the early Sixties, after all, when walking was reserved for hallways and aisles and the people who sadly, hopelessly careened through their driven lives in big cities. And even there, when late in the decade the marches came, the marchers took to the streets and highways, leaving the sidewalks to white men standing behind badges, and lenses, and the times.

As I walk the concrete ribbon now I think of it as an artifact of a world long gone, a memorial to the men who cut its course, set it forms, and poured a new world into being - this suburbia. Each embedded pebble a drop of sweat, a buck earned and penny saved in the hope of a lawn-mower of their own and a child on a tricycle.

The roots of trees have raised the sidewalk’s edge. Torn the ribbon jagged - it trips me into paying attention to the blade gouged lawns, the children in the street pedaling, dodging cars driving to and from the city, and the fractured fragments of the impossibly wide suburban dream once so neatly tied up with concrete ribbons.

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Breadcrumb #454

CRAIG KITE

A

My shoulder pops when I rotate it. Also my grandmother is dying again. Last time she almost died her house burned down. She just laughed then and described what a soul looks like. My mother always calls me when death is singing shrill and I come down to see my Noni leak a little more out of her tired body. She is still alive and tries to look beautiful with a plastic tube slid down her throat. But her eyes say something in between I love you all, now please let me leave, &, Oh god, I’m scared. What’s going to happen to me? Some days I can’t remember my name. I named her Noni before I could spell my own name. It was a mispronunciation of the Italian word Nona. She tries to smile pretty. I brush her hair from her forehead and kiss her. She used to drive a school bus for handicapped kids. I could listen to her talk to me for hours. I never even had to say a word. It felt like a real grownup conversation. Now we crowd around the hospital room trying to lift her spirit, either toward heaven or the will to live. Her throat is sore and she can’t say my name now. I can’t tell if she remembers it. They had to resuscitate her yesterday. She was probably moments away. She wakes up and winces and I wince. 

My mother is a trooper. She’s paints the cabinets cherry. She paints the cabinets white. She paints the smoke show in my mind. She makes me move the furniture. Everything is a matter of fact built on distraction from the inevitable. She is stronger than I hope to be when I watch her die one day. My older brother is more financially stable than me. I’m better at focusing. I can beat him at arm wrestling.  Except I can’t. But I’m taller than him. 

In reality, I take much longer this year to respond when my mother texts that Noni is dying again. I don’t buy a bus ticket immediately. I am hiding in New York and tell my girlfriend I’ll go for the funeral. Or I’ll call mom tomorrow. I am just like my father, wanting to believe my presence is more trouble than help. My shoulder pops when I open my internet browser. I’m already worried about arthritis. 

B

Today Brett Kavanaugh’s seat on the Supreme Court was confirmed. Also my grandmother died. I’m not sure which is stranger, life or death. I’m not pro-life. When people die we say they pass away. When I was younger my body passed over the railroad tracks that run through Queens, New York and it was an adventure. Today my body passed under them a few blocks from my apartment and it was mundane. One day my ghost will pass straight through them. I’ll walk through walls whenever I want to scare a two-year old. My grandmother’s ghost would never do that. She was the personification of a hummingbird. There were always hummingbirds sipping sugar water from the feeders she put out around her house on Hummingbird Lane. She had figurines of hummingbirds collecting dust on every piece of furniture she owned and now nobody wants these nicknacks. Tylenol was Tomynol. She said words wrong but I liked hers better. She was the most racially tolerant and progressive of all the old folks in my family. And once when my mom asked her as child what would happen if a white and a black person had a baby, grandma said it’d come come out like a zebra. She was super good at Super Mario. Now there’s a fire behind my face and my scalp is all tingly. I still can’t cry but I feel out of my body early. And that is because I’m staring at her corpse.

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