The Threshold Between Life and Death

I am on the threshold between life and death. As a parting wish I ask the Lord to flash me a moment, any moment, from my life. The moment is me, age 19, standing in my kitchen on Gold Street, Albuquerque, rolling a lint roller over my tight red pants as I dance to Outkast - " And the whole world loves it when you make that sound (Bah bah-da, bah bah, bah-da da...)." Sunshine, stink of garlic, dirty lemon-patterned pot mitt. It is extraordinary.

An Infant Memory of Tires

I had a flat, and by the time I pulled up to Ortiz Tire I had two – I think they sprinkle screws in the alley to enhance business. More snow fell, innocent and white, each flake a unique possibility, but the pileup around us was so hopelessly soiled with exhaust, who cared. Boo Boo woke with a frown and coughed out a stream of curdled milk. She looked plump and crotchety, and I sat in the back seat with her singing along with the radio, Little Red Corvette! Her frown cracked into an enormous toothless smile. I held her tight to my body in her screaming pink snowsuit with Eskimo trim, and jiggled her in the garage, surrounded by mounds and mounds, coils and coils of tires. She was mystified by the black mountains. When she is 27, she’ll have a dream of infinite, whispering black mountains in twilight, and she’ll interpret it as an ancestral land, when in fact it is an infant memory of tires.

Travnik, Bosnia