Author Archives: janishaag

(for Clifford) Lying in bed, thinking about the antibioticthat needs taking, trying to figure out what to eat with it that my recoveringinnards will tolerate besides applesauce, I have a rare wish: that he were hereto scramble a plain egg … Continue reading →

As I sat at the stoplight,looking at its outstretched arm, the spindly fingers of a bare treereached for the cloud-streaked blue-gray beyond, a signal thatspring is a coming attraction, and, as if announcing its emergence,other early bloomers have already burst … Continue reading →

1. Three weeks before your tax appointment, drag out last year’s box of bills/receipts/miscellany that’s bound to have pieces of paper needed to accompany… 2. …the stuffed-full file folder of what you imagine might be write-offable/reportable for your Super Tax … Continue reading →

Clearly, I have taken colonsfor granted for far too long:both kinds. For one, the sweet little pieceof punctuation that sets upa list or example. (Digression: How many timesdid I repeat that to studentswho were likely to never use one? And … Continue reading →

May my heart unfold its pinkpetals like the first floweringplum blossoms of the season, unabashed, unafraid of whatmight come to jostle or dislodge.Let the sparkling hearts in the center pop up eagerly,hoping to attract early beesawakening from winter, ready to … Continue reading →

Not that I couldn’t, but more likely, I doubt I’m gonna: • Become a rock climber (which I fantasized about decades ago)• Or a hot air balloon pilot (ditto on the fantasy)• learn to SCUBA or surf (ditto on the … Continue reading →

In the hospital emergency departmentI overhear a social worker talking to a youngwoman in a recliner getting heart meds buthas no place to sleep tonight. “Do you want two days at the Salvation Armyand then apply for permanent placement?”he asks. … Continue reading →

… If you were to collect the found art of your everyday life and honored it—the repetition, the patterns, the strangeness, the heartbreaking familiarity—well, then I think you would see that your ordinary life is actually quite extraordinary. —Jamie Cat … Continue reading →

Walking out of the grocery storenot long before closing timebehind three young people—well, young to me,as so many are these days— I heard the young man in the trio say,“As far as I’m concerned, Sophie and meare already friends.” They … Continue reading →

(for Rebecca on her birthday) ••• We love them as who we are now.We love because that’s what’s left.—Alberto Rios from “Five Years Later” Going through each drawer, each closet,opening every cupboard and pulling outthe large and the small, the … Continue reading →