brothers
October 18, 2009
- We knew, my older brother Matt and I, that my father had enlisted in the Air Force in 1963. He told us that he had wanted to get away from home, out from under his father, and so, instead of waiting to be drafted, he simply marched downtown and enlisted. My grandfather had served in the Air Force twenty years before, during World War II, stationed in India. I don’t know what he did there—the ...
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September 9, 2009
- I grew up in an upper middle -class home in Los Altos, CA (just below the upper class homes in Los Altos Hills). I always thought my family was strange and didn't fit in, but that was before I really learned that every family is strange.My father was an alcoholic until I was almost 7 years old. Some of my earlier memories are of him being drunk. I remember one time when we were so excited for him ...
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September 7, 2009
- A Weeping Willow’s shade is otherworldly. Sweeping those famed branches aside feels like peering into a secret world of fairies and sprites. Breezes sway the long, languishing limbs, and reveal a perfect spot for mischief. I remember the first and only time I stepped beneath the Weeping Willow in my grandparents’ front yard. I could not have been more than ten-years-old. The tree had always ...
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April 23, 2009
- Getting men to talk about family in an open and honest manner is a rare and special treat and reading Brothers: 26 Stories of Love and Rivalry is like sitting in a comfortable chair, hidden in a darkened room, listening to guys tell their secrets to each other - when they think we aren’t listening. The book is so chock full of treasure, beauty and truth, that it is almost impossible to know ...
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March 28, 2009
- Persian Girls is a memoir but reads like the best fiction. There is so much suspense in this story, that I frequently found myself flipping to Nahid's biography in the back to remind myself that she survived it all and is now safely ensconced in the multi-cultural nest of New York City. As the seventh child born to her parents, well-off Persians living outside Tehran, infant Nahid was given ...
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March 8, 2009
- Does the ending seem too abrupt?
Wilderness
Go to sleep, I whisper to my brother next to me
in the hammock, go to sleep. He keeps jerking
and fussing; he whines ants are crawling in his ears.
I pinch him again. His legs against mine feel sticky
and hot, like he's covered in piss-scented honey.
He rolls over onto my hair, his mouth full of
small sleeping moans. I twist my ...
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November 5, 2008
- This will be the first poem in my verse novel (and probably the last poem from that collection that I'll post here--gotta save something for the people who buy it...). The poem (and, for the most part, the novel) is about my brother Drew, who died on this day in 1986. i guess you knowyou diedtwenty-two years ago todayyou didn't seem so young thenin fact you seemed much oldermuch more ...
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October 22, 2008
- there were four of usfour boysfour brotherseach unlike the otherseach a distinctive blend ofsylacauga and sophisticationdrew and i occupiedthe middle of the orderhe was three years olderas the school year fallsdavid was the oldesta year ahead of drewand the two of themmade quite a pairjamie brought up the rearfive years behind mefitting inconsistently inwith both my friends anddavid and drews’ ...
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