Writing

Language is a partnership, an active relationship. It is a unique symbiosis: what is said, what is not said, what is heard. How we make meaning from sound and gesture is a collaboration. The spoken word needs an audience. The written word needs someone to understand the tale.

Creative Non-Fiction

The Beige Coat

My mother dressed us up and dragged us into church every Sunday. We would go to the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in the South End, or the Church of the Immaculate Conception on Harrison Avenue, or to St. Anthony’s Shrine downtown. My grandparents, my father’s parents, were married in the chapel of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross. My parents were married in the same chapel.

The church was large and intimidating with a hundred thousand steps leading up to immense doors. My mother would give me and my sisters pennies and nickels to play with on the kneelers. I’d use them for tiddly-winks and chase them under the pews. I was absolutely forbidden to snap the hat holders. They let off like a gun shot, bouncing echoes louder than the priest. “Crack!” I couldn’t help myself. I needed to create that nose.

My mother ignored my sisters and me when we were in church. She was praying. If we spoke, she would not respond. She was praying. Tug at her sleeve too much, she’d get up and move to the center of another pew and sit with strangers on either side, unapproachable. I didn’t like going to church. I did like going to church with my grandmother. During mass, when they say aloud, “Lamb of God,” she would ball her right hand into a fist and puch herself in the stomach, one punch for each “Lamb of God.”

I was not allowed to wear red patent leather shoes for Easter. The shoes had to be black leather or black patent leather. I wanted the red shoes. I insisted, and begged, and pleaded, and got smacked. “If you mention those red shoes again,” my mother yelled, “you’re getting the belt!”

I never liked going to buy Easter clothes. The dress I took home was never my first choice. My feet were forced to be unexpressive and ho-hum. The gloves got dirty. The hat blew away if you didn’t put the elastic under your chin and I hated the elastic under my chin. But it all changed on Clifford Street, 1965. The year of the beige coat.

My older sister was seven turning eight in November. I had turned five in February. I got a beige coat for Easter. I loved my beige coat with the large buttons that were smooth on one side and textured on the other, shallow pockets, and a patterned lining. I didn’t mind my black leather shoes when I was wearing my beige coat. I posed proudly at the picture taking tree, beige coated and tall. I didn’t care that my younger sister was wearing red shoes. My hat had leaves and plastic fruit on it. My sisters’ hats were plain straw with a wide ribbon, pretty but uneventful. Besides, my younger sister was too little to understand the responsibility of wearing red shoes. She kept asking to be carried.

Easter Sunday I was the first one dressed. I couldn’t wait to put on my beige coat. I had left my shoes buckled the night before, ready to don unassisted. My ankle socks were white with lace around the cuff. I moved carefully. I had a knack for kicking myself on the ankles when I walked and didn’t want my Easter outfit ruined by streaks of black shoe polish on the white cotton or splotches of red blood seeping through from accidental kicks. I could hear my sisters crying upstairs as my mother combed the snarls out of their hair and yelled at them to stop moving. My father had already brushed my hair. He and I sat at the kitchen table. He was drinking his morning coffee, cream and one sugar. He had sugar in his coffee only at breakfast. He had put some coffee with a lot of milk, no sugar, in my small, plastic tea cup.

Every Easter morning, my father would give my sisters and me a coin. We’d decide if heads or tails was going to be right or left, then we’d go for a walk. We’d stop at each intersection and toss the coin up in the air. It would land on the ground and we’d cluster around it to see which way we’d proceed at the intersection; heads or tails, right or left.

“Can I wait outside?” I asked my father. “Sure,” he answered, reading the paper. I put on my beige coat, my hat with the plastic fruit, the spotless beige gloves, grabbed my new black pocketbook with the gold metal clasp, and floated out the front door. I got to the corner and took of my glasses. I hated my glasses. I slipped them into the right-hand pocket of my coat. I didn’t have a coin to flip and I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere except the dead end of the street we lived on to play. I walked along the curb looking at the houses. I wondered if the people were dressed and out walking or running around inside, shrieking in their underwear. I forgot about staying clean as I picked through rocks and sand along the curbside, looking for treasure. I didn’t notice that my glasses fell out of my pocket and a car drove over them. I was delighted to find them crushed and flattened in the gutter. My mother screamed at me all the way to church and all the way home. I didn’t hear her words. I was protected. It was Easter and I was wearing my beige coat.

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Poetry/Prose

Pas de Deux

I feel like a leaf
at the end of October
when it’s cold
and the wind blows scattering
a small leaf
clinging to a branch
colors lost
easy to crumble
with holes from bugs and age
and the utter exhaustion
of blooming
what mirror is time
we could dance
ask me — ask me again
hold out your hand and
say, “Shall we?”


a leaf
fragile
the rain bleeds through me
a weight in the insistent wind
the spinning is
irresistible