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Weird tree-person looking east
I love the turning of the year toward light at the winter solstice. It makes up a bit for winter looming ahead. This year was tough for everybody, it seems; as Eric Tran said when he visited to give a poetry reading here, we spent the pandemic borrowing energy from the future, and now we…
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Mother of stories
My mother died early Friday morning of lymphoma in my sister’s house in New Jersey. There’s a lot to process–the good way the family gathered around and helped her through rapidly worsening illness; all that she said to us as we nursed her; great kindness and serious failures in the medical treatment she received–and the…
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Women on the radio
Broadcast, by Zayneb Allak It’s about loneliness. A woman from Birmingham tells us about the time she was lonely. When I left Birmingham the Bull Ring was still ashen. I remember it in the slush: a lady in a pink and gold sari with a grey anorak over the top dragged blue and white plastic…