Rooted to

I’ve got a new short essay about an aged apple tree in my backyard in this wonderfully curated collection of tree-themed writing. Now available via bookshop and elsewhere.

“Series editor Josh MacIvor-Andersen returns with tales of birth, death, resurrection and reincarnation. Sagas of leaving and returning, of harrowing bravery and crippling fear. Lyric essays about moon trees and space debris, personal narratives braiding the assassination of JFK (on Elm Street!) with the resilience of a relationship and the suffering of surgery. Fruit, both ripe and rotted, bees and blossoms, roots and branches pruned, broken, or holding their own. Just like us. Just like all of us.”

Grandma Millie Would Have Been 103 This Month

She asked me to get to know the dirt, from my knees, under my fingernails, behind my ears. The late spring dirt where warming roots shot leaves upward. Because when you grew your own salad, you didn’t need a coupon for Alberton’s. The peas too. They were dry and mealy in the produce section. It was mostly green leaf and red leaf lettuce and though she probably knew, I was too young for her to tell me lettuce was part of the daisy family and was originally grown in Ancient Egypt. But she rarely cooked anything that wasn’t roast beef and potatoes, grilled fish and squash casseroles. There was an Egyptian restaurant close to her house, but it was right next to the ice cream shop, so we’d prioritize sweet cream over Koshari. Salad had to be part of every meal, for fiber, for vitamins. That’s how she lived to be 95. She suggested I imagine the future of her tomatoes mingling with cucumbers. How delicious. But she always begrudged bites that went into her mouth, every calorie counted, balanced with swimming or long walks. She flicked slugs off the lettuce while making goofy faces and whistled while moving though vegetable rows. Eventually there were carrots and cucumbers and peas sneaking over the fence to the empty lot next door where she would move and start a smaller garden, under the same splinter of sun.

Notes from Jalisco

Polka dot skin, 100 bites for midnight itching
Anatomy of an executioner wasp
Please, no shoes on chairs
Cómo se dice “amazing” en Espanol?
A few sips of raicilla and Boney M
Well fed stray dogs always napping
Dusted sunglasses
Agave spikes
Do not trust the GPS
A parade of breakfast cats
The thud of rooftop avocados
Caminos llenos de baches
Burnt Sienna mountains
Ghostly miners
Inconsistent thorny crowns
A walk in new shoes, with socks on
Mi hija es una niña feliz de once años