Genetics dictate we are a 50/50 split of our parents, and researchers have identified various cycles that continue from one generation to the next. But how similar are we really to our parents and how do we become our own person–and what loop will we become in the chain of familial tradition?
Category Archives: Literary Purveyor
Killeen Sky
by Margery Hannah There is an ocean largeabove Texas where copper flickers ivory fish ribs scale the expanse like veins in overgrown leaves and a skeleton man smiles downat me Where clouds paddle near eternity And I inhale and swim intermittently Where from one small lightgenerations are born And stars salute as soldiers to respectableContinue reading “Killeen Sky”
Median
Monday meter from #theliterarypurveyor: An avenue named for the state and its best city is the median for two juxtaposed neighboring communities—Crown Heights and Brownsville—and the setting for today’s #poetry
A Hero is More than a Sandwich
The stumble I don’t recall, only the image of the tall, lean nanny named Jean standing at the top of the basement staircase looking down at me, unmoved by my cries, navigates the hippocampus.
The Welcoming Committee
The Welcoming Committee
asked me to present a thirty dollar
poem. Like sun-sweet honey
make it, they say, coruscate
and luke-warm.
Crystal White
I’ve lived at twelve o’ four Clymouth street for over fifty years. I’ve seen people move in and out and trees grow from saplings into fat telephone poles with umbrellas that shade the streets like canopies. Don’t ask me what kind of trees—I don’t pay much attention if they don’t yield fruit. Lord knows I can’t eat leaves. I’ve seen neighbors become grandmas and grandpas and children become parents. I’ve seen the children I once taught piano become performers, doctors, teachers, and drug addicts. Yes, I’ve seen it all and I’m gonna tell you about one family. Yes, just a one because that’s all you have time for. Life moves so fast these days; I don’t want to take up too much of it. Before you know it, you’ve blinked your eyes and you’ve become grey and toothless like me.
Storms
I look forward to them the way
I once wet-tongued over
cotton candy as a child.
Neon afro-sugar melting
in my mouth, what is
sweeter than that?
Shard in the Eye
Recently, I reflected on my birth order and whether I fit the associated stereotypes. I am the baby of the bunch: my dad, a young widower nearly ten years my mother’s junior, had two beautiful girls (eight and nine years my senior) when he met and married my mom. My mother had given birth toContinue reading “Shard in the Eye”
Orange Can of Kerosene
I stood out back, with an orange can of kerosene in my right hand, looking at the overgrown grass, hanging tree limbs, and corroding nails through the roof shingle lying at my feet. All times when walking in the yard I was careful; the fallen shake multiplied daily and soon the roof underlayment would be viewable from the street. Snow covered the descended pieces in winter and in autumn they were concealed by leaves. Those were cozier times; I could light a fire. The chimney smoke distracted from the balding roof, deciduous trees and autumn leaves peppering the ground; the celebration of fall transformed my signifying dilapidation into beauty. On summer days the yard was dry enough to discreetly pick the bits up after a day’s work, though it was the type of neighborhood open drapes display the booty of wealth-commitment; earlier in the day someone may have already had a peak.
Fox and Sand Rats
A sly fox uses a secret to build an empire that includes a pack of sand rats.