Ladies Union Circle, First Congregational Church, Nantucket; founded 1846; oldest, still active, ladies church group in the US.   Even before I read why they were formed, there’s my…

  Baled wool washed ashore for weeks. At first, the appearance of each bundle was sobering and macabre, but after a few days, one woman began to look forward to…

The Omar D. Conger was docked in Port Huron, Michigan when a boiler exploded. The ship was blown to pieces. A 200-lb radiator plummeted into the Falk Undertaking Parlors during…

  In one month she assembled the 1000-piece mandala mosaic on a dining room table that never saw a meal. She turned to the puzzle after he died, and I…

  Light goes a long way on its oil, while the men are still throwing tires two in a hand onto steel carts, stacking tires six high in rows, then…

  I think of her during the colony’s collapse— loyal, responsible, confused, steadfast in her hive— after her drones exit, leaving her with little bees, unable to ask:   Where…

  I am a pie weight, a mere pois, mirepoix: mix or pie? I’ll make this instead. My blind tart has a lattice to come. Dried beans replace weights in…

  In the dark, it’s safe to move around. By day you will be seen, though nature offers its disguises, the spice bush that shelters deer and on a leaf,…

  There was an island in his chest, and he called it “son.” There was a small boat capsized on the ocean, and he called it “faith.” Once, there had…

  She’s heard of sadness but not anguish. Her uncle thinks we ought to gather stories now for when she’s older and trying to distinguish memories from what we’ve told…

  You hate the easy things to hate: new buildings and the weird materials they’re made from (gypcrete, carbon fiber, foam), 5-Hour Energy, four-dollar gas, the newness of the sacrificial…

  She likes to wheel herself because she isn’t fast enough to wake the elf who shakes his hips and calls on us to deck these halls each time I…