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Articles by Lisa Dordal
City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
Through deeply personal and culturally grounded narratives, Water Lessons explores the relationship between reality and imagination, faith and doubt, presence and absence, as the speaker grapples with multiple dimensions of grief arising from her mother’s alcoholism and eventual death; her father’s deepening dementia; and her own childlessness.
NEXT TIME YOU COME HOME
An intimate and illuminating glimpse into a parent-child relationship. Awards & Accolades Our Verdict GET IT A daughter distills her mother’s correspondence into short, reflective entries in this collection. In 2021, two decades after her mother Milly’s death, Dordal rediscovered 180 letters that her mom had written to her between 1989 and 2001.
As If She’d Been Traveling
April 3, 2001 My mother’s final correspondence was a postcard dated six days before her death and received the Monday after—the way postcards sometimes arrive after the traveler has returned. This one is from Graceland (a place I know she’d never been)— the photo of Elvis, half in shadow, half bright.
The Men in My Lesbian Life
In 1985, I was a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding. I wore a shiny pink dress with nylons and white pumps; my hair was super short, and my glasses were large. All three of my siblings got married a) soon after college, b) to someone of the opposite sex, and c) to someone from Pennslyvania (even though we weren’t from Pennsylvania). During the reception, my father stood up, microphone in hand, and said: “I have one more daughter.
“The Last Time”
The Last Time The last time I saw my mother, she was sitting in the front passenger seat of my father’s car. I looked down into her face through the open window. She looked up at me and smiled, said hello. Her right hand resting on the door. She looked older than her age, but beautiful. And luminous. Something in her already beginning to change. Like a seed, buried in the ground, sensing the sun’s fuller light. She smiled, said hello. Or maybe I was the seed, she the light. I’m here, she said.
Sheltering in Place
A friend reminded me recently of joy— my joy. My laugh, infectious, she said. She’s remembering the games we played in seventh grade. Dialing random numbers from the phone book— Tell me a story, we’d say to whoever answered. I need stories to survive. The daughter I don’t have making angels in a foot of new snow. Or sometimes angles because the confusion delights her—lying down once, then again, stretched out against her own otherness. My niece, at three, is afraid of angels.
The Sun Magazine | The Lovely Harry, Philip Larkin, And Me | By Paula Harris | Issue 545
When we talk about poetry, my psychologist rests his elbow on the window ledge just to the right of his chair, then rests the side of his head in his hand. I look at him — black beard speckled with white, black hair pulled back in a ponytail, black shirt, black tie, black trousers, black socks, polished black shoes — and think he looks perfect in this position. Sometimes his shirt and tie are dark blue. I wish I could figure out how to write a poem about him sitting like this.
Broken Arm by Lisa Dordal
Like you hold a baby, the nurse said. Hold your arm like you hold a baby. And I held it that way. My fingers fat with pain I couldn’t feel as I breathed come back onto my suddenly strange skin. Want to read the rest? Please login. New to Narrative? sign up. It's easy and free. Email Address: * Password: * The password field is case sensitive. Account & Password Help. Joining Narrative gives you FREE access to thousands of stories, poems and essays.
Dementia Bus by Lisa Dordal
The glasses they give me darken my vision, blur it into shapes I can’t immediately recognize. I’m supposed to set the table for breakfast, write a check for the electric bill, put on the brown jacket— not the blue jacket— and sort the shirts in the laundry basket— long sleeved from short. Want to read the rest? Please login. New to Narrative? sign up. It's easy and free. Email Address: * Password: * The password field is case sensitive. Account & Password Help.
MOSAIC OF THE DARK
Many of these poems have previously appeared in literary journals or anthologies, and Dordal (English/Vanderbilt Univ.) has received a Robert Watson Literary Prize and an Academy of American Poets Prize. Her degrees in divinity and fine arts account for her graceful interweaving of Christian references.
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