“Woman Pissing takes Picasso’s bravado-soaked declaratives and subjects those claims to a bloodletting. Cooperman’s narrator invokes Julian Barnes’ assertion that Picasso dramatically simplified art. One page later Cooperman demonstrates thus: Because Bonnard kept watching the sky, it became a dozen different colors. / How hilarious that Bonnard cannot paint a sky blue! thought Picasso.”
“You are two and each day is a world
in which to peel gold pawpaw leaves
from the path; to plunk pebbles
in water, one by one; to trace tar
ribbons on cement in watermelon
rainboots”
“My mother hangs up
in the midst of conversation
without saying good-bye.
Her father fled Germany
to secure family passage
eventually. “
“What if mourning is my engine? Sound almost muted, just a whir, behind the T-shirt and jeans. My hands do what is expected—wash dishes, answer emails—instead of reaching down to thump on the dirt or dig.”
“And afterward, we’ll say
it was good, how much we
like how it feels, as our hands
rub the back of our heads.
Then we’ll embrace, relishing
the feel of one another.”
“When you open the door to Toni Morrison, the book begins, you look genius in the face. The multiple facets of the phrase open the door are characteristic of the linguistic dexterity Verdelle and Morrison enjoyed. Over two-and-a-half decades, Verdelle literally opened the door to Toni Morrison many times, a surprising development in Verdelle’s life as a young novelist, and her memoir figuratively opens the door on Morrison as a writer, mentor, and friend.”
Forgive me if the books I might have written linger like a miscarriage.
That word—as in miscarriage of justice—and what is justice now
that the surprise quickening of my youngest might have felt
less blessing than sentence. I had a choice, and still somedays
I lament the sentence I’ve been given and not given.
“A friend texts to ask for ways to keep
her four-month-old occupied
during “tummy time”—a sweet name for the exercise
that will prevent her child from wearing
a helmet while the now-doughy skull forms:
an assortment of dry beans in a plastic bag”
“I’m with you tonight at the candlelight
service in my new straw hat, Mary Janes,
white gloves, a dress that you’ve sewn,
the whole congregation holding candles
at midnight.”
“I hear it before I see a mass of gulls
dive-bombing the channel at the foot
of the falls, where a dark smear
roils like a storm cloud underwater.”
“For her to have achieved more renown, I wonder if Gus would have had to be more pushy, more self-centered, more sure of herself. Or maybe she just needed to have been born a hundred years later. But she was herself, in her own time. My mother, who was a writer, had to make similar choices in her life. And I have too, trying, not always gracefully, to balance being married, having a child, and making a living with the commitment to a creative life.”
“prayer beads and a well and cow dung and smoke and coal and flag plastered on a hill and olive trees and olive trees choiring and an olive seed smacked onto a plate by my grandmother and sheepish eye and a rug in the bedroom from Bulgaria and yogurt fermenting and ashtray with a stomach full of ash and cevşen read thrice and halo of television and plastic covered couches and kahvehane and kahve and Müslüm Baba hunkering hangimiz sevmedik? on taxi radio and Atatürk street and my uncle looping a rope around the awning as a swing for me and kittens and chickpeas and chickpeas dried and collected in a pile and chickpeas on fire”
“What
to do on that unexceptional Sunday, our kids already swim-suited
and seat-belted, but go on, go on, and drive to Door County.
The rest of the ride silent except for my sounds, no one sure
if they’re allowed to have fun until they’re finally loosed
to the shadow-sharp air, their calls and accidental laughter
high as the wind-buoyed gulls.”
“The aches in your back spread in springtime,
breaths caught in each twist. What have I
been? you must ask me. The sheen in
your eyes stolen by dark, it punches
circles onto bone maps, on pelvis,
ribs. I will write you, I offer.”
