Jeanne Murray Walker

After his funeral, which of the elevenopted to find and mend their rotten netsand fish?                          And what made them set, again,the clock to three years . . . . Continue Reading »

When he died he weighed sixty pounds, the paper says, and I go out of my way to drive by the address where his brother locked him in the closet, wondering at the blue door, the flower boxes, wondering where the fury started , how early and how hidden the first bruise awaking like a bat, dark wings . . . . Continue Reading »

“Time lost its absolute character . . .” –EinsteinThe Wilsons lived across the street, and when kids knocked, he gave us apples after school. Years later we read she died of head wounds, the hobo stepping in her blood, running without taking . . . . Continue Reading »

Oh, they chose, all right. This is the New World: no guarantee, but opportunity. In one summer three crops, like beautiful daughters, have eloped with death’s sons. One with grasshoppers, one with drought, and one with hail. Now they have no seed corn. On their husk pallets the children who . . . . Continue Reading »

They have waited all their lives for train tracks to lace them to other towns, and now the word comes down. The Soo Line will build tracks and a depot, but two miles away. The Soo Line will pay to move their houses. They clash like caroms colliding, some of them long to shoot two miles away, some of . . . . Continue Reading »