New Year’s Dayand I will start afreshas caterpillars are molting. I will establish order in my sock and underwear drawersand the drawer of scrambled kitchen utensils. And it would not be the New Yearif I didn’t clean the refrigerator,pitch the stuff we’ve no ideahow or when it got there. And all the while, caterpillars are moltingas I
Deliverance By Margaret Van Every Foot and fist embossed on the belly, time came when the womb had had its fill of you, your punch and kick. The membrane that once swaddled you so sweetly, now a shrink-wrapped garment was, binding foot against face. Coiled homunculus ached to unfold like buds, leaves, and wings. But
Refugees By Margaret Van Every All it took were two: the primordial man and woman were the first to be expelled. The soil, the orchard, the pile of leaves on which they dreamed, the beasts that they had named—the sum of the familiar they thought was theirs. A sword at the back corrected
Waiting For The Lyft By Margaret Van Every Andrew Marvell Lately, due to a momentary brush with mortality, I’ve been pondering a recurrent metaphor in the death literature. It’s this: waiting to die is like waiting for a ride. Yes, some form of ride will eventually come by and deliver us to our destination.
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Why Rage? The days are growing shorter, a blithe oxymoronto deceive ourselves with simple sleight of tongue,while in the dwindling of days lies the melancholyof December, the mind so tricked by early darknessit yearns for sleep before the evening meal is done. No artificial light can rescue us. He tries the light offootball on
A Good Death By Margaret Van Every I’ve been thinking more about death lately. Three people I knew died in the same week, not to mention Philip Roth—as though there was a special incentive to take advantage of just that week. Two of the three died quickly before they even saw it coming, no
Springtime SomewhereNear Where Icarus Flew By Margaret Van Every Thousands have made the promised hajj; hundreds have been trampled and won’t come home. Six million rams will have their throats slit in remembrance of Isaac, whose throat was spared. Others, remembering another, are nailing hands and feet to crosses or whipping flesh to shreds.
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Editor’s Page Guest Editorial By Margaret Van Every The Maid’s Maid I was ten when it first occurred to me that I had a responsibility, if only to myself, to clean up for the maid. My mother had recently died and my dad got Louise to come and clean for us. He also explained
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History Says A Man Discovered The Clitoris By Margaret Van Every Of course, it had to have been a man because there were no women anatomists. Discovering something in the mid-16th century meant that you were the first to announce your finding in print, something akin to “discovering” a new land already inhabited by
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FIND A NEED, FILL IT, HAVE FUN DOING IT—Roy Nolan’s Motto By Margaret Van Every Everyone knows Rambling Roy, ubiquitous documenter of everything worthy in our Lakeside villages. Roy’s been documenting all his adult life, starting back in 1955 in Montreal where he acquired on-the-job skills of filmmaking. A total novice, he chanced upon
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