Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of a Blue Flower
The back of an embroidery hoop keeps a record the front will never admit to. Knots, carried threads, one green wire strung across bare linen. A close look at where the work shows its labour.
Yukon Pat
Articles
PLACEHOLDER — section intro.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of a Fence
A fence repair holds from the side no one looks at. The knot goes behind the post, ugly and turning inward, doing the work out of sight.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Bread
The part of the loaf that faced the pan — pale, flat, and holding the exact corners of the tin. The side that did the touching and shows it.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Hand
The back of a hand after garden work, and the record the palm refuses to keep.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Quilt
A finished quilt tells the truth from behind: carried threads, a wandering seam, the map of how it was really made.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Skillet
The bottom of a cast iron pan keeps everything the top pretends to forget. A close look at the side that takes the heat.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Table
The underside of a table nobody sanded, because nobody looks. Pencil marks, old glue, a name half-written in the dark.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side of the Woodpile
The neat face of a stacked row is for the yard. What holds it up is bark, offcuts, and one damp slab jammed against the siding.
Wrong Side
The Wrong Side: June 1968
The glass had come loose, so I lifted the frame off the wall and turned it over. The back had more to say than the front.
Things My Hands Know
The Wrong Softness
A drawer in an unheated shed, a warmth that shouldn't be there, and a mouse that filed my receipts by what held heat.
The Spam Wall
The Yellow Sheets Up Top
The oldest part of the wall, near the joists, where the paper has yellowed and the toner has faded and the corners have gone brittle. The project is old enough now to have sediment.
Things My Hands Know
Things My Hands Know: The Full Bucket
A five-gallon pail, filled to an inch below the rim, and the way the body reads a weight before it lifts it.
Things That Were Supposed to Stay Dry: Socks
The creek looked smaller from the bank. The squelch, the cold climbing the ankle, the full-body event of wet feet with miles still to go.
Essay
Things the Ground Taught Me
Not five essential tips. The lessons that come from loading the canoe wrong, from wool that saved a cold day, from rope you didn't coil in time.
Things With Other People's Names In Them
This Book Belongs To
A used textbook with a name and grade filled into the ruled line inside the cover — the kid grown up or given up, the name still holding the desk.
This One, But Not Stripped
Going to the hardware store with a single old screw in the palm and asking for its twin. The man who knows which one you mean by looking at the one in your hand, and the bin of near-matches that aren't it.
The Dallas Wall
Three of the Same Man, One Pot of Beans
The wall shows the same face on three screens at three different ages, all of them arguing, while a pot of beans comes slowly up to heat in the next room.
Roadside Architecture
Three Walls Is a Building
A trail shelter at the head of the path — three walls, a roof, a bench, a board of curling notices. Its whole job is to be a place to stand out of the weather for a minute.
Things My Hands Know
Thuck
The ear knows the edge is gone before the eye checks. A knife, an onion, and the sound a dull blade makes on the board.
Things With Other People's Names In Them
To Ellen, 1978
A used book with a fountain-pen inscription on the flyleaf. The book changed hands and outlived the wish, but the ink held.