Susan, she of the poetry, said I must try Broder’s book.

(Milk Fed—what’s that one about? Pumpkins? Almanzo’s in Farmer Boy, a bowl parked next to it?)

I pull into the desert town at sunset, begins Broder, feeling empty. I felt empty the whole drive from Los Angeles and hoped that my arrival would alleviate the emptiness, so when the emptiness is not alleviated, not even momentarily (all emptiness-alleviators are temporary), I feel emptier.

Mm, nice. Just a minor change, maybe. I pull into the desert town at sunset feeling empty. I felt empty the whole drive from Los Angeles and hoped that my arrival would alleviate the emptiness. (When the emptiness is not alleviated, not even momentarily—all emptiness-alleviators are temporary—I feel emptier.) Isn’t this the tiniest bit better?

“Help me not be empty,” I say to god in the Best Western parking lot, continues Broder. Since I don’t turn to god very often, I feel self-conscious when I do. I’m not sure what I’m allowed to ask for, and I worry that I shouldn’t want the things I want. Are my requests too specific? I should probably ask to simply be happy doing god’s will, though I’ve heard it said that when you’re doing god’s will you feel like you’re flowing with a great river, not against it, so it seems like the happy feeling should just come naturally.

Mm mm, yum. I would use a capital G, that’s all. That’s just me.

This is as far as I’ve gotten but I can tell things are going to be delicious.

Melissa Broder, Death Valley, Scribner 2023

 


 



 



 

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 30, 2025 at 9:24 AM

    Expect creative vocabulary and sentence structure and punctuation in this one. It’s part of what makes it special. Go with the flow ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  2. AnonymousJune 30, 2025 at 3:27 PM

    I always appreciate your book recommendations. Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. ShirleyJuly 28, 2025 at 3:48 PM

      Big apology—I didn't make it through!

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
Friday Afternoon                                   En route to cousin Ann’s house, relegated to the back seat, I keep clicking clicking, trying to catch perfectly son and mother. But what’s more telling is the visit. We’re met by Ann at her front door. I’m right behind Mom, ready to grab at her if she topples. “Now you’re a spring chicken!” I announce to Ann, because it’s Mom, not Ann, who’s 95. Spring chicken relatively speaking, I mean, because being around somebody ancient makes you suddenly young. I’m practically a chick today. But right away Ann, her round eyes a-sparkle, lets out that she’s 91. Oh my. Paulson and I didn’t realize. As we navigate past her, what else flies out of her mouth is a Bible verse, although for all I know it’s Ben Franklin. “They that compare themselves among themselves are not wise,” she chortles. Paulson loves it. I love it. We laugh and laugh. She’s always been a ...
Read more
Image
Cookies for Barry, part 2   Because when I asked him whether people ever leave their rugs and never come back to reclaim them—he has a carpet-cleaning business—he stepped over to the pile of rolled-up ones along the wall, hefted up a big wool piece, unfurled it on the floor, and said, Here. You can have it. It once lay in Barry’s home. He’d been wanting to drop it off at Mercy House—a local, seedy secondhand shop for the down and out as well as regular ordinary propertied bargain hunters. Donations are always accepted. Barry didn’t know this, but the drab yellow was the exact perfect color. He said the rug we’d brought in—worn, too small for the bedroom—probably wasn’t worth the cleaning fee. He helped lug his beauty out to our car. When I took him his cookies yesterday, he said—well, I forget what he said. Maybe something about things working out for us both. He’d not had to bother with hauling the rug away. He has my everlasting devotion. But here’s what’s dicey. How can a per...
Read more
Image
Her Falls , or (Not) Navigating the Terrain    This one wasn’t anything, really. Clutching the green tomatoes she’d just picked for a pie for her husband, she went to step back onto the patio but her foot caught on the concrete edge. “Gotta keep my head up,” she told herself on the way down. “I can’t hit the patio with my head.” “Go get Dad,” she called to son Phil in the living room, tomatoes all around her. He’d come to the cottage to visit. She doesn’t think she made the pie. This second one, she was watching helicopter rides at a fundraiser event down the road from the retirement complex. Standing under a tree at the edge of the field, she was getting tired. She propped herself against the trunk for a bit, then decided to head back to the auction tent. A twig on the ground, though, caught her notice. It might cause somebody to trip. She smacked her foot down on it to break it—and suddenly dizzy, she crumpled. “Are you okay?” asked one of the young guys sitting near...
Read more