I apologize for saying your mother was a dirty red. It was Joe McCarthy's fault, he made everyone think Russians were all communists and I was only eight years old and believed him. Now I understand that just because your family fled Moscow in 1910 didn't mean they were commies. But this is the thing. You didn't have to sit sobbing at the picnic table under the big elm tree for five hours because I hurt your feelings so much. I mean, dramatic or what? I had to listen t

An illustration that didn't make it into Ennui Go - my soon to be ex boyfriend, the baby and our "mellow" on the way to California!

This is a drawing that didn’t make it into the book. I was leaving Vermont with my new boyfriend. The baby is a little dubious.

After her husband died the household went downhill because she was useless when it came to ordinary tasks like taking out the carnage or grommeting hinges or opening a jar no matter how she struggled and spinned no matter what fangled patent ornaments she utilized, it was no good, no good at all, and she found that kicking the door did not fix it, just made things worse and she fed the cat three times a day instead of only once like her husband admonished her when he was aliv

I go to the gym for classes three times a week, and mostly it's the same fifteen or twenty old ladies and a sprinkling of men with bad teeth. The women are all sizes and shapes, most of us a bit clumsy and arthritic, but jolly at the same time, thrilled to be among our peers and engaged in an activity both social and remedial. And then there is this one lady, Sandy. She's real short and dyes her hair a kind of reddish brown like a squirrel. She's the rowdy one in class, w

turn on lightbulbs in every room accelerate the music till it syphons out the fog on the tin roof loud enough to make anyone crazy because he looked me smack in the face and said in a trembling voice that he loved me but he left me anyway he died in bed wasting and hollow-eyed so I cried and played Billie Holiday to drown out my grief and the fog gulped me down tight wrapped its arms like grandma woolies and snug cocoons tucked me into the top draw of the bureau could have be

We drag ourselves to this widow's wake feeling mute and cold. When did your husband die, one woman asks us all. Last month, and you? Yes she says. Me too. Was it bad? Awful, we chorus. I feel numb, says someone. Oh yes. I can't sleep she adds, voice shaky. Sleep? A woman whispers wryly. What is that, I forget. We cry our sorrow and stories of better days of love and youth then scrabble at the box of tissues in the middle laughing through our sobs.

I'm impatient, jittering at daybreak jumping my way from yesterday to next week tearing through the gauzy fabric of the hours I didn't sleep last night too busy knitting the skeins of time I wrote a little, read some strings of words It's not easy looking in the mirror at three a.m. eyes puffy, cheeks crisscrossed by tired lines behind me empty air and light rain falling I am alone and you are dead sleep escapes me all our dreams unravelled knit and purl, hook and flinch scro

My neighbor lost a dog last week I lost my husband My neighbor is high-strung I am a widow She says she is grieving She says a dog's death is an enormity no less than a man's death She weeps and cannot be comforted I lost my husband last week It is an enormity When my neighbor knocks on the door I pretend I am deaf I am deaf I am enormously deaf I remember my neighbor's dog He was small I once saw my neighbor walking the dog on a leash And I turned and said to my husband Loo

Find out about how I published Ennui Go.