MEMOIR EXCERPTS

AFTER:WORDS

In her series AFTER:WORDS Bowen re-examines her archive of personal journals and photographs, merging them, with the magic of hindsight, to create succinct representations of real events and experiences of her past. Each piece is numbered with Bowen’s age, in days—a time-keeping method that is at once deeply personal and hopelessly abstract.

AT THE LAKE WITH MY PARENTS LIKE WHEN WE WERE TEENAGERS
AFTER:WORDS
DAY 11,718


Back then we still emptied the contents of our suitcases into drawers
But now we live out of our bags, instead
Because we know that time is nothing
And that the week will end in just a few days


*

It reminds me of Grandma teaching us the purl stitch
in her living room, back home
And of diving for mussels off the dock here
with cousins

We were just kids in one-piece bathing suits,
wielding knives
Cracking shells open, but finding no treasure there
Only that soft, wasted flesh

It wasn’t long before I stopped eating fish

*

IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME
In this collection of stories about ‘Nonna’, Bowen merges her own account with her grandmother’s, as well as historical research, to create a narrative of one life that is part memory, part magic. This is an ongoing project.

The Atlantic

Elsa and Eddie met on a boat, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Below them was five miles of dark briny water, and above them sixty-two miles of atmospheric gases. Seventy-eight parts nitrogen, to twenty-one parts oxygen, to one part argon, mostly. And beyond that was all of the stars and planets, and an endless expanse of celestial stuff, which they would spend almost no time at all considering. Because at such a moment in time, in May of 1951, on a passenger ship called Laguardia, in the middle of the Atlantic, there were only two directions one was inclined to look—forward or back.


It’s Been a Long Time

Nonna opens the door.
She says, Look who it is!
As if she knows.

She ushers me in,
It’s been a long time!
It hasn’t.