<div class="line">In a quiet moment,</div>
<div class="line">maybe a sunny day drive</div>
<div class="line">alone,</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">it can slip in before I notice—</div>
<div class="line">imagining myself if</div>
<div class="line">he were dead.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">And sometimes, unable to stop</div>
<div class="line">screaming,</div>
<div class="line">my vocal cords snap.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Other times—I sleep</div>
<div class="line">through the night, pack a bag</div>
<div class="line">and hitch-hike to Montreal.</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">Still</div>
<div class="line">if I could go now—as if he</div>
<div class="line">never happened—</div>
<div class="line">to a store selling ten-year-olds</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and browse through the selection:</div>
<div class="line">smart ones, athletic ones,</div>
<div class="line">well-behaved ones</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">and one in the corner—</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">there humming tunelessly</div>
<div class="line">glancing this way and that</div>
<div class="line">following light and shadows</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">those Elizabeth Taylor blue eyes</div>
<div class="line">that one-sided smile—</div>
<div></div>
<div class="line">I’d point and say,</div>
<div class="line"><em>him.</em></div>


Grandpa Bob

Door Gunner

In a Quiet Moment

<p style="padding-left: 0px;">There must be ways of making sure children<br />
don’t remember. The intensity of fear, the proper<br />
amount of pain, a certain kind of death threat.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">My aunt smiles sweetly, tells me she has absolutely<br />
no memory before she turned 16. My friend Cal<br />
has flashes of someone coming into her bedroom—</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">it is dark, she is afraid, but she keeps her knees<br />
shut. As a child I was often present in my sleeping<br />
dreams—in the middle of flying, or walking</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">naked into school, I was there, outside the self<br />
I was being. I could make my dream-self fly higher<br />
or faster or even force my eyes to open.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">The day I go in for surgery to remove the bone cyst<br />
they say is causing my jaw to lock, I panic.<br />
Counting backwards from one hundred I think,</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">what if they don’t give me enough halothane, what if<br />
I can feel them slice, but cannot move or speak?<br />
There are families who don’t suppress memory.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">Parents confess, siblings confirm. These families have<br />
police reports, doctors’ notes, witnessing neighbors.<br />
Then there are those families who function best</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">by the story they build to tell to others, to one another,<br />
to themselves. Pity us Cassandra types, who see back<br />
instead of forward, into the viscera of the horse.</p>
<p style="padding-left: 0px;">If a dentist takes a needle full of Novocain, injects it<br />
into my gum, then pushes here and there on my numb<br />
face, asks,<em> Can you feel this?</em> I say, <em>Yes.</em></p>


SIXTY SONNETS

Authority

Under the Knife

<div class="line">Lately, every book I pick up is about someone</div>
<div class="line">talking about some loved one dead or dying—</div>
<div class="line">Alzheimer’s, cancer, old age. Me, I have five</div>
<div class="line">dead people. Two of them are my parents. The</div>
<div class="line">other three surprise me, how much they come</div>
<div class="line">around. Michael said I was the first person he</div>
<div class="line">ever met that came to Montana from somewhere</div>
<div class="line">else. He suddenly realized that if I could get in</div>
<div class="line"><em>there must be a way out.</em> At Capital High in 1977,</div>
<div class="line">I sat next to him in Latin. Every school reject and</div>
<div class="line">loser was in that room. Mrs. Swor, god bless her</div>
<div class="line">heart, rallying us all to conjugate dead verbs.</div>
<div class="line">Michael lived in a doublewide on a treeless strip</div>
<div class="line">of land 20 miles outside of town. Vehicle carcasses,</div>
<div class="line">stacks of tires, filled the yard. Michael’s room,</div>
<div class="line">downstairs, tucked in the back, was covered with</div>
<div class="line">posters of France, Times Square, the Titanic.</div>
<div class="line">Swimming trophies clogged the tops of furniture.</div>
<div class="line">Michael never wanted me to meet his father</div>
<div class="line">with his military haircut, cheek full of chew. He</div>
<div class="line">used to hold Michael upside-down and flush his</div>
<div class="line"><em>piece of shit head</em> in the toilet. When Michael’s</div>
<div class="line">acceptance to Georgetown came, his father muttered,</div>
<div class="line"><em>Niggerville,</em> and left the room. After high school</div>
<div class="line">Michael and I caught a Greyhound, rode three days</div>
<div class="line">to see <em>A Chorus Line</em> and Macy’s. I got to stand</div>
<div class="line">next to him the first time he saw an ocean. The night</div>
<div class="line">he died I chose his star—the furthest on the left</div>
<div class="line">in the belt of three stars in the constellation of Orion:</div>
<div class="line">Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. I wasn’t expecting three,</div>
<div class="line">that’s just how it turned out. Michael, Krista, Bill.</div>
<div class="line">Though in life, that close together, they’d probably</div>
<div class="line">fight, call each other names—<em>faggot, whore, bum.</em></div>
<div class="line">I put Krista in the middle, so she has someone on</div>
<div class="line">either side. At 22 she’s the youngest and hates</div>
<div class="line">to be alone. Krista had the biggest, brightest smile.</div>
<div class="line">Her nose only looked that way because of how</div>
<div class="line">often some guy punched her out. She never stopped</div>
<div class="line">believing the next one who called her <em>girlfriend</em></div>
<div class="line">would make everything alright. With Jake or Rocky</div>
<div class="line">or T-Man, she was happy ‘til sooner or later she’d</div>
<div class="line">crawl in bruised and bleeding, eyes swollen shut,</div>
<div class="line">bones she didn’t know were broke. At St. Agnes</div>
<div class="line">in Manhattan, we sat in darkened stairwells below</div>
<div class="line">stained glass windows covered with cardboard and</div>
<div class="line">tape. She traced cracks in the marble steps while</div>
<div class="line">she spoke. Krista wouldn’t want anyone to know</div>
<div class="line">what happened when she was little—but she</div>
<div class="line">didn’t care who knew about her five dollar blow</div>
<div class="line">jobs in Grand Central, or about dealers that kept</div>
<div class="line">her high in hotel rooms the first of every month.</div>
<div class="line">Once I helped her write a letter to her sister in New</div>
<div class="line">Jersey. She worked on it every day for weeks. She</div>
<div class="line">wanted to spell the words right: <em>promise, sobriety,</em></div>
<div class="line">forgiveness. Bill was in his 60s when I met him.</div>
<div class="line">I wasn’t sure, at first, if he was homeless. Maybe</div>
<div class="line">it was his age, or the way he held his head up, or</div>
<div class="line">how he looked me in the eye. Housing folks couldn’t</div>
<div class="line">see past the arson, alcoholism, years of prison.</div>
<div class="line">When he finally got his apartment, he was close to</div>
<div class="line">70. He moved in and right off adopted two stray</div>
<div class="line">cats with open sores and missing bits—a piece of</div>
<div class="line">ear, an eye, a limb. In his living room he built</div>
<div class="line">an altar decorated with flyers door-to-door Jehovah’s</div>
<div class="line">pass out. Bill lived with evil spirits. He used God,</div>
<div class="line">alcohol and a radio blaring to keep them quiet. Once</div>
<div class="line">he told me when they were in the room. One was</div>
<div class="line">seated in the corner, the other standing by the doorway.</div>
<div class="line">Bill’s left eye twitched, he hunched his shoulders,</div>
<div class="line">he said not telling was better, more normal. Michael</div>
<div class="line">got AIDS sometime in the ’80s and rode it out until</div>
<div class="line">1995. The last time I saw him, his boyfriend he was</div>
<div class="line">living with was out on a date. Michael said he was just</div>
<div class="line">grateful the boyfriend let him stay around. He wasn’t</div>
<div class="line">angry or sad, and he wasn’t like those noble dying</div>
<div class="line">types on TV or in the movies. He didn’t keep his sense</div>
<div class="line">of humor and he didn’t spout metaphysical pearls of</div>
<div class="line">wisdom. He was frightened and defeated. He kept</div>
<div class="line">repeating how he would have liked to take his mom</div>
<div class="line">to Paris. When Krista died, I was upstate at a conference.</div>
<div class="line">Someone heard, <em>OD’d</em>, someone heard, <em>beat-up.</em></div>
<div class="line">I didn’t call the morgue; I didn’t try to find out.</div>
<div class="line">Bill died in his own apartment. And near the end,</div>
<div class="line">when he couldn’t make it to the toilet, his cats were</div>
<div class="line">fed, their litter clean and they had fresh catnip toys.</div>
<div class="line">Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka. My star’s up there too.</div>
<div class="line">Maybe Bellatrix, but that’s <em>female warrior.</em> More likely</div>
<div class="line">Rigel, whose name comes from its location in relation</div>
<div class="line">to the others in the constellation—the left foot.</div>


MILK CHIP MONDAY

The Calf in the Pantry

My People

Limit result set to products with a specific global product attribute

Limit result set to products with a specific global product attribute term ID (required an assigned attribute).

Limit result set to products with selected global attribute queries.

Limit result set to products assigned a specific category name.

Limit result set to products assigned to a specific group of category IDs.

Limit result set to products not assigned to a specific group of category IDs.

Limit result set to products assigned to a group of specific categories by name.

Limit result set to products not assigned to a group of specific categories by name.

Limit result set to products based on a maximum price.

Limit result set to products based on a minimum price.

What paramater to use to order the objects by.

Use ID to return only children. Use 0 to return only top-level items.

Specify objects whose parent is in an array.

Specify objects whose parent is not in an array.

Limit result set to products with a specific average rating. Must be between 1 and 5

Limit result set to products based on a keyword search.

Limit result set to products assigned a specific shipping class ID.

Limit result set to products with specific SKU(s). Use commas to separate.

Limit result set to products with specific slugs.

Limit result set to products assigned a specific status.

Limit result set to products in stock or out of stock.

Limit result types to types supported by WooGraphQL.

Limit result set to products assigned a specific tag ID.

Limit result set to products assigned to a specific group of tag IDs.

Limit result set to products not assigned to a specific group of tag IDs.

Limit result set to products assigned to a specific group of tags by name.

Limit result set to products not assigned to a specific group of tags by name.

Limit result set with complex set of taxonomy filters.

Limit result set to products assigned a specific type.

Limit result set to products assigned to a group of specific types.

Limit result set to products not assigned to a group of specific types.

Limit result set to products with a specific visibility level.

where

The parent of the node. The parent object can be of various types

parent

The globally unique identifier of the product_variation object.

databaseId

name

date

The local modified time for a post. If a post was recently updated the modified field will change to match the corresponding time.

modified

format

description

Product variation SKU (Stock-keeping unit)

price

regularPrice

salePrice

dateOnSaleFrom

dateOnSaleTo

onSale

status

purchasable

virtual

downloadable

downloads

downloadLimit

downloadExpiry

taxStatus

taxClass

if/how product variation stock is managed

manageStock

stockQuantity

stockStatus

backorders

backordersAllowed

weight

length

width

height

menuOrder

purchaseNote

catalogVisibility

type

image

keysIn

multiple

metaData

Connection between the ProductVariation type and the ProductVariation type

Connection between the Product type and the Product type

preview

Cursor used along with the "first" argument to reference where in the dataset to get data

Cursor used along with the "last" argument to reference where in the dataset to get data

The number of items to return after the referenced "after" cursor

The number of items to return before the referenced "before" cursor

Unique cache key to be produced when this query is stored in an object cache. Default is 'core'.

Term ID to retrieve child terms of. If multiple taxonomies are passed, $child_of is ignored. Default 0.

True to limit results to terms that have no children. This parameter has no effect on non-hierarchical taxonomies. Default false.

Retrieve terms where the description is LIKE the input value. Default empty.

Array of term ids to exclude. If $include is non-empty, $exclude is ignored. Default empty array.

Array of term ids to exclude along with all of their descendant terms. If $include is non-empty, $exclude_tree is ignored. Default empty array.

Whether to hide terms not assigned to any posts. Accepts true or false. Default false

Whether to include terms that have non-empty descendants (even if $hide_empty is set to true). Default true.

Array of term ids to include. Default empty array.

Array of names to return term(s) for. Default empty.

Retrieve terms where the name is LIKE the input value. Default empty.

Array of object IDs. Results will be limited to terms associated with these objects.

Direction the connection should be ordered in

Field(s) to order terms by. Defaults to 'name'.

Whether to pad the quantity of a term's children in the quantity of each term's "count" object variable. Default false.

Parent term ID to retrieve direct-child terms of. Default empty.

Search criteria to match terms. Will be SQL-formatted with wildcards before and after. Default empty.

Array of slugs to return term(s) for. Default empty.

Array of term taxonomy IDs, to match when querying terms.

Whether to prime meta caches for matched terms. Default true.

Connection between the ProductVariation type and the TermNode type

after

before

first

last

Connection between the Product type and the TermNode type

terms

Connection between the ProductVariation type and the visibleProduct type

Connection between the Product type and the visibleProduct type

visibleProducts

Connection between the ProductVariation type and the shippingClass type

Connection between the Product type and the shippingClass type

Shopping Cart
items

April 3, 2014Hilary MeltonIn a Quiet Moment

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April 3, 2014Hilary MeltonIn a Quiet Moment

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Under the Knife by Hilary Melton

My People by Hilary Melton