the anniversary of my portentous birth

The Anniversary of My Portentous Birth

The panhandling amputees, the palsied church-step dwellers, the deranged

had a stomachache, and then the recess bell rang two seconds later, and we

survived, and we are here, all of us, making homes, having and raising children

with the Coosa County Probate Court, paying the registration fee to Judge,

that he always gave a generous cut to security. But other times she was

a resilient person. She‘ll land on her feet. He touched the bottle. ―May I?

She looks, too much, like the woman of sorrows. She wants to rush to the door

her oldest sister had left for college; the year that she got a bicycle for Christmas

he watches her open the bathroom door and disappear inside, and he knows

they transferred me to public relations, which was where I found my niche

lodged now in her throat, the effort she must make to sound natural. She accelerates

reading her way through the shelf’s worth of voodoo books she ordered.