Author Archives: meaghancc

It’s the time of year, green leaves to golden to red then falling down down down to the dry grasses below to be crunched and crumbled together back into the elements. Everything in a race to die or to become … Continue reading →

The railroad tracks behind my childhood home feature prominently in the tracks of my memory. It had been years though since I spent any significant amount of time on or around them. Chasing crawdaddies and tadpoles in the pooled water, … Continue reading →

Backyard My parents backyard, my hometown. The two-story farmhouse, yard sandwiched between that and a decrepit railroad tracks that an occasional string of cars parked on, railway screech, high pitched scream, en route to the steel factory, steel on steel. … Continue reading →

I watch him, tattered stonewash jeans, white threadbare tanktop. His mop of white hair the same since the day I was born. He is so tan, my mom calls him a Native American. I believed her for a season. One … Continue reading →

They say good fences make good neighbors. But I’ve fallen out of love, I unlove, our fence. The fortress on South Van Ness. Once an old rickety white picket fence, she shuddered when slammed. The winter rains would come, swelling … Continue reading →

Rats, rats moved in and chewed up our new car engine. Then a flat tire. Then a tire sensor broken. Then a busted, vandalized tail light. Then a cracked windshield. And that was just the car problems. Distracted on the … Continue reading →

Red, pinks, chums, springs. They are all congregating, with clarity in their mission to take their last breaths at the head of the watershed, up kilometers of jagged rocks punctuated by gentle sloping sandy beds, with smooth worn pebbles. Past … Continue reading →

I peer out the window, neck craning to see if it’s snow, or sand, or the prairie. The Sierra Nevadas give way to smaller mountain ranges, then rainshadow deserts, the great salt flats. The western Rockies like spikes, unsettled and … Continue reading →

What they don’t tell you is that a sliver of glass, quietly, stilly sitting on the dirty corner of Mission and 17th , patiently waiting for you to fall on it, can cut your hand. It can draw blood, dripping … Continue reading →