https://www.riverteethjournal.com/feeds/blog
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Watercolor MeadowAt age 70, my mother has taken up watercolor painting. In our family chat, she uploads photographs of her progress-birch trees, beachscapes, stems...
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Inflatable Christmas YodaI discover him on my morning walk, in the yard of a brick Tudor home in my neighborhood, anchored to the dry brown lawn by wires and stakes, but...
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A Seasoned SkilletSearching for a recipe-old school, pulling cookbooks from the shelf and scanning glossy photographs-a yellowed advice column slips to the floor....
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The Coloring BookHe had red hair, almost white in certain slants of light. It was his first time on the ward. Barely three years into his life, the stuffed...
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An Invincible Army of LosersWhen Steven Harvey was eleven, his mother died by suicide. Three weeks later, his father married a woman with whom he'd been having an affair....
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Day One, or Maybe TwoThere are people stuck in cars. There's a driving ban, save essential workers. The essential workers are getting stuck and the rescue teams...
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Homage to the Jewish Morning Prayer Giving Thanks for the Wonders of the Body, Its Vessels and Arteries, Openings and ClosingsAfter getting held up in the Y parking lot all those years ago, after the weirdness of seeing the dark circle within the approaching gun muzzle,...
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Honey (I Put Down My Ax)The first one said honey was what Vietnamese hookers called from doorways, so don't call him that. The next one said honey was a substance to...
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A Tender, Complicated Ode to Birding in Postcolonial AmericaPart bird book, part Native Great Plains history, part meditation on the author's mixed Irish American and Lakota background, and part...
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On Massachusetts General Hospital Reaching Out to Schedule Your COVID-19 VaccineEven nearly a decade on, they couldn't have known that your cognitive decline and general dislike of communications necessitated all emails...
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Jumping in LeavesSomewhere after the turn of the millennium I slid from leaf jumper to leaf raker, and so on this smoky November afternoon I hold down my job for...
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CeremonySpring struggles through enough days to offer tulips. They've popped up in every garden lining the street, and a few reach from the corner...
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The Connective Tissue of EmpathyAlyssa Graybeal begins her memoir with a list of acronyms for a host of medical conditions, the central one of which is Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
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The Beckoning RoseSeveral years ago, my wife and I drove from Charlotte to Pinewood, South Carolina, hopeful we might find the gravesite of my Johnson ancestors....
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SkywritingOne evening, when my kids were little and demanding, and my sense of self felt like a slow leak, replaced with the repetition and duty of young...
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The Cheese CaseOn Sunday mornings, I open the shop alone. Pulling myself from the heavy gravity of my beloved, with coffee in hand, I use three keys: lock, gate,...
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Old HorseHis bones have a hold on the earth, with sinew and muscle built from the hills, corded and bunched over his shoulders and haunches. Along the edges...
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On the 20th Anniversary of 9/11I think of John Ogonowski, leaving his farm at dawn in his green Chevy pickup . John flew cargo planes in Vietnam, knew the Boeing 767 like creases...
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Wailing in Irony and Sorrow: Masters of the Early BluesBlackwood's homage to early black music begins and ends in an imagistic but unlikely fashion.
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SnappedI heard thesnap before I saw it - my late grandmother's worn rosary tugged apart by mypreschooler's tight grip. She'd only wanted to...
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The AquariumStill dark when booms from the living room startle us awake. We stumble toward the sound and find a bird in the atrium. It's a white-winged...
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HoleA year into the pandemic, as thousands of people were dying each day and March hung its low gray skies over us, my five-year-old son and I went out...
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After a storm, a quiet dinnerWe sit across from my grandfather, gone from our lives until this moment, and feed him warm rice from a plastic container balanced on my knee. When...
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DepthsFrom behind the window of an air-conditioned gas station, I see my dad wiping his brow with the flipside of the paper towel he just used to check...
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Chicken FingersThe last best friend my Memom had was Marge. Every night at dinner, the two sat together in the nursing home dining hall. With her glaucoma and...
