2.10.2016

Edges (Nome, Alaska)

The days get muddled together when I recall. 8 years is a long time in many ways especially when I think of all the living that has happened from then to now.  On this past Saturday, I would remember the hospital room, the quietness of the floor so early in the morning, the oncologist. I would recall all of this and more, almost to the minute. 

5 a.m. and the interstate was more abandoned than not. A lone truck in the far right lane. It’s light cutting through the still darkness. By 6 a.m., I had coffee in hand for both of us and was making my way upstairs to the 3rd? or was it the 4th floor of the hospital?  Three hours later the oncologist who was supposed to be away surprised us. I don’t recall his exact words, but he said something about consulting with his partners, a cat scan, spread, and how Rob who only a few weeks earlier had a prognosis of at least another year of life, was now terminal. Less than 4 weeks, he would be dead. 

This past Saturday, I was sipping a second cup of coffee when the date hit me. February 10. 9 a.m.  I had come home from a client the afternoon before suddenly feeling miserable, certain I had caught a bug. Sore throat, achy, headache behind the eyes. The body knows what consciousness cannot always grasp. I went to sleep early, waking Saturday morning and feeling off. And then I remembered. That is what grief is. Years can pass and in the space of an ordinary day, a sip of coffee, a date and time , and 

     the knees 

fall out from under.

Six Works by Black Authors to Read

A few books authored by Black writers that I’m looking forward to reading this February, including a most anticipated book (James) that will be published March 19, 2024.

1. The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett —I’m reading this now. A tough opening of a book that tells of a series of brutal murders that take place in Money Mississippi. At each crime scene there is a second body of a man who resembles Emmett Till.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize
Winner of the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Finalist for the 2022 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award
Finalist for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award
Longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction

2. James by Percival Everett (published in March, 2024)— Oh what I would have given to have this book all those years ago when I taught Huck Finn.  This is an insightful retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — all told through the eyes of Jim, an enslaved man making a bid for freedom on the Mississippi alongside Mark Twain’s Huck. I always thought Jim was the moral center of the novel. 

A most anticipated book of 2024.

3. Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward — What now feels like a few years ago, one of my book groups went on a reading spree of Ward’s books. Her fiction is often brutal and somehow at the same time compelling—connecting the past to the present.  Her novels are intriguing and so language-rich. This is a story of enslavement as told by a teenage girl, Annis.

4. Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adejei-Brenyah —a debut story collection about growing up Black in the USA.

5. Survival Math: Notes on an All America Family by Mitchell S. Jackson—This summer I spent nearly a week in Portland, Oregon and this account of what Jackson terms, the Other America, surely resonates. The title of the work comes from the calculations Jackson and his family made to survive. 

6. Spectral Evidence: Poems by Gregory Pardo — One aspect of this book of poems that caught my interest was the poetic focus on MOVE, the militant separatist group that was bombed by Philadelphia government in 1985. Last year, a painting of mine was selected to be the cover to a memoir by one of the few survivors of that bombing. The narrative biography, Osage Avenue: Coming of Age in the Summer of MOVE by Tony Gervasi was riveting, tragic, especially given the immense loss he suffers.  I’m curious as to how this history translates to poetry.