Mothers and Sons*
Sean MurphyThe room was dim and cool, a shadowy contrast to the searing humidity outside. Her son had left his car running while he took her upstairs. In the elevator she…
Machinery*
2002 During the summer of 2002 if the phone rang while I was getting ready for work, that meant my mother was calling. If the phone rang while I was…
Machinery*
2001 The sights and smells, never welcome, quickly become recurring, then established. Once you’ve patrolled the hallways of a recovery ward, or helped your mother to and from the bathroom…
Machinery*
2000 The hardcore chemotherapy commenced just as the sweltering summer of 2000 settled into its sustained, apathetic groove. Our family took turns getting my mother to her appointments, and while…
Machinery*
1997 When you are young or healthy enough to not know better, or need to know any differently, you won’t spend a great deal of time pondering the ways our…
A History of Violence*
I. Fighting doesn’t solve anything. Everyone knows that. But then, the point of fighting is not usually to solve anything, it’s to settle something. There is a significant discrepancy between…
Interpolating A Poem: As Opposed To Prayer*
I. Nervous and unnerved this evening, alone: Searching for solace, something not unlike prayer, A hope that the past will not repeat itself, Progress: a preemptive strike, this procedure (They…
This Family’s Story: The Beginning of the End*
I didn't need a doctor to tell me that it was over. On the way to no longer being, a person suffering from a terminal disease, like cancer, ceases to…
Looking Into The Sun*
(March, 2000) I look down at my mother as she lay dying. It was worse than I expected. (You don’t expect anything; you worry and fear and anticipate and dread…