When I was five, I was content sitting in my wheelchair at my grandparent’s dining table, splashing with my “piano hands” (as my grandma called them) in a cake pan filled with water. Only my action figures could drown in two inches of water. If I fell over my head would not sink as deep … Continue reading
Like Beethoven’s motive in Moonlight Sonata, asphyxiation is a common theme in my life. I’ve suffered pneumonia twice, an ailment no one should know how to spell before 8th grade, hospitalized both cases. I’ve fought bronchitis numerous times after my scoliosis surgery to correct the 90 degree curvature of my spine. A concept no one … Continue reading
I wanted to be a vet, said the phlebotomist when I asked if she always dreamed of drawing human blood: like a Pollock of phlebotomy existed. Animals make better patients, she continued, they don’t cry, while scratching around in a drawer for the butterfly needle needed to perform my venipuncture, since neuromuscular diseases cause muscles … Continue reading
I thought when everyone died I would be released, but it hasn’t turned out that way at all. Honey is sweet, but it still takes work to coax it from the comb. Love is like that, too, though good luck convincing it back into the jar when the stickiness finally gets you down and no … Continue reading
As boys we knew the creeks so well that once a choice was made to fish, we’d almost run each other over crossing the lots to take the best spot, downstream, maybe, from some snag, in the trash around a falling willow, or in the swirl beneath the shadow of a rock. It wasn’t that … Continue reading
It’s Paxil, she says. Take it with bourbon. Better yet, find a shrink—a wise one. She wants me to swallow whatever I need to fill my hills and valleys in, and her GP’s flat happy to write paper for whatever you want to try. But I worry that pills will turn me into someplace else … Continue reading
Thai lips whisper, she’s out of her mind; she can’t hear them over North Gate jazz and covers of the Beatles. her leather boots stomp rhythmically; her beat twining with the night’s other tones. her body is lean and tan, ink flowers coil round her calf: her age glimpsed only in the laugh lines—deep and … Continue reading
can’t focus, won’t focus. don’t really know how. should have taken the staystillandquiet pink pills they work. i don’t eat with them. but they work. as my body shrinks my mind sharpens i always wanted to be skinny but could have forgone the panic attacks. they are part of the pink pills gnawing on the … Continue reading
Our relationship was driving, the jerky shift of gears; your Bible of cds you flipped through without looking, page upon page of your memories filled with bass, guitar, and sound and me, tilted back in the passenger seat, watching misty streetlights flash across treetops the only beautiful thing in our dismal, little town. Continue reading
Coe Review 