Namesake

Namesake

Photo: KMarsh / Shutterstock.com You named me after three tombstones in Laurel Hill Cemetery. Your freckled hand on your swollen belly, your light gray eyes scanning the marble and granite slabs. You were running out of time. You said it was the touch of cinnamon in...
A Quintana dos Mortos in Love

A Quintana dos Mortos in Love

Photo: Carlos de Paz from A Coruña, España, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons He had crossed A Quintana dos Mortos for the same place and at the same time for years, and yet he had never seen that woman before: dressed in white light she was sensually laid down on...
eu kalypto

eu kalypto

It’s that time of year when the eucalyptus trees peel their bark like wet swimsuits and let them slap onto the ground, as if they could step out of the soggy pile and kick it to the side. They bare their long trunks, poised on the precipice over New Brighton beach...
The Munlochy Clootie Well

The Munlochy Clootie Well

It’s a bright July day. We’re driving back from Rosemarkie Beach when you ask, ‘Have you ever seen a clootie well?’ I’m certain you know I haven’t. I’m a Londoner who grew up in the wide spaces of the American Midwest. You’re an English ecologist inhabiting the...
Bald Knob, West Virginia

Bald Knob, West Virginia

If you happen to be driving through the mountains of West Virginia, and if you happen to be going the long way to wherever you’re going – because Tucker County is always the long way, unless you’re specifically going there – you may cross a bridge, and go into a town...