Shirley

Posts

August 09, 2026

Piggy Pink By the time we reached Pittsburgh I was enough stuffed up to crash. I looked around for the tissues box, my husband found me a wastebasket, and giving myself up to the sofa, there I mostly stayed. I kept to the one end, so as not to blow my germs on anybody, and as much as the head fog allowed, I chattered along. But you know children. They want to crowd closer and closer. In the evening, I guessed if Youngest, who loves her picture books, retreated to the area between the sofa and the wall, behind my head, I could read some stories. Then I guessed if she could get her teeth brushed and get herself to bed, I could read a little more. Upstairs, though, I didn’t slip into the bed with her. Sitting on the climb-up-to-her-bunk steps, the bed railing serving as our barrier, I read parallel to her. The other sofa in the living room, across from mine, allowed my husband and me our own infirmary suite that night. I could hew to my space. In the morning, though, family wafting to...

August 04, 2026

Photo courtesy of Zachary Kurtz Safe Skin, Safe Knuckles They keep snatching him. I don’t get much of a chance. It’s not that they don’t trust me, I don’t think—except one night when we were crowded in front of the World Cup, when I had Great-Grandbaby on his tummy on my lap because he liked my skirt, its soft big red flowers, they started yelling. Did they honestly think I’d let him push off, like a runner does when the gun goes off, and ram his head into the lamp and knock it over and bang onto the floor, himself? The trouble, now, is that everything goes into his mouth. In the beginning it was just his cushy wee lips making the ravishing hunger sounds or little pipsqueaks of contentment. Now he babbles to beat the band and chomps down on people’s knuckles. I’ve seen him gnawing his mother’s face, too. Faces and knuckles are good because he can’t choke. So what’s most safe, for now, is skin like that, and his cotton ...

July 26, 2026

A Sighting This was just yesterday—Saturday. I’d sat myself at the porch steps, I think to pull some burrs from Buster’s fur, but suddenly something on the coneflowers swam into view. What in the world. I stared. A cocoon, I guessed, but unlike any I’d ever seen. Straight out of Stranger Things , it had a solid, shiny black casing that even sealed off the creature’s apparent nostrils. I rounded the corner of the house, summoned my husband, led him to the porch. Look, I said. What in the world. He peered. Some kind of amorphous protozoan, maybe a slime mold, he thought. He pulled out his phone, snapped a photo. He sent it to his iNaturalist app. But the species that popped up on his screen didn’t even come close. His specimen lacked any features of an insect larva. His specimen lacked any features of a slug. That it might be an organism made no sense. Then he understood. I can tell you what it is, he murmured. I was still trying to get a good picture. Instead of going off f...

July 18, 2026

Apple raisin bran. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Murch. For Ladies With Muffins You’ve found some pants, high risers. Oh good. They’re stretch, too, also good, except stretch means exactly that—stretch. The pants give and give until they sag mournfully. You have to keep hitching. So here is the fix. You’ll need two safety pins and an old soft belt with the buckle cut off. 1. Where the two front belt loops of the pants are placed, but on the inner side of the waistband, rip a few of the stitches holding the waistband to the pants. Or if you prefer, cut two small vertical slits in the waistband, just enough to allow for the width of the old soft belt. 2. Attach a safety pin to one end of the belt and push it through one of the openings. 3. With agile fingers, move the safety-pin bump through the tun...

July 13, 2026

Snakery ( cont’d ) , or Here in Eden I saw it—the tail end disappearing up into the crack where the porch ceiling meets the wall. Now Creepy was in the house, in the void space above our downstairs bedroom. I scurried into the room and made noises and threw my husband’s slipper at the ceiling. Fat chance of that helping any. Next came the day of the loud encounter, when Local Grandboy Age 12 was here. Our dog was rooting at the small wood pile on the porch, not noisily, but then Grandboy and I took heed. Finally we saw it—or anyhow, a snake. It slid into the dark corner and coiled. Buster wouldn’t let up. He kept hounding and hounding, until—oh! We scrammed. By then, Grandboy’s mother was here and he had to depart on other business. Later I sent her a message for him and a still from my video . See that shooting-out tongue (or whatever that is)? After I took Buster in the house he started up his barking again and there was the snake’s head at the door glass, peeking thro...

July 05, 2026

Hot Morning Think back in disbelief, your pregnancies in summer and no fans. Swollen you lay flat on cold linoleum where you rented or sat chilly in the tub. Were you that poor or nuts? Your babies exponented now and body drained to empty, struck with déjà vu, no, worse, you guess it never got this hot. The fans, the fans. Point them head-on at dried eyeballs, whirring wildly. Slat all the window blinds to upward, aim the air up to the ceiling where upstairs it’s baking, for a heat shield like those capsules come from space and coming down in flames. Just stay down here. Down here and wet your hair until it drips and put on garbing if you must. Must is better, come to think, to keep your flesh from rubbing, clamming up. Go for shapeless breathing thin, all wild and gaping. Forget the slip, who sees, who cares. Desperate times and desperate measures, cottonsheet your grainy itchy sofa, now you have a place to live. Unlike those who’ve cement highways going past, not some darkling gre...