In the interest of being honest, I fucked someone else fifteen minutes before we met. In the pay toilet at the Peace Park, room for only me, this guy, the squat toilet, the sign that said Gyōgi yoku shi nasai – Mind your manners. He laughed at some half-formed joke I made and turned me […]
I’d never seen a cat in a cardigan before. I liked the alliteration of it, though. It made some sort of sense that a cat would wear something buttoned rather than, say, a turtleneck. Plus, the soft turquoise really did accent the orange striped fur nicely, and I’m normally not one for mixing cool and […]
The heat swells up from the boardwalk as I descend from the second floor open-air restaurant in Kona on the Big Island. Only a block away the ocean slaps onto the shore within the breakwater surrounding the cove. I grip onto one side of the iron railing, moving one hand over the other as I […]
In Cedar Lake conservationists have planted fish attractors along the gravel bottom, in the hopes of building a sustainable underwater environment. We are not thinking about science, Jonny and I. Instead, we troll the shallows of Shellcracker cove. Beyond stoned. Aiming for anything clueless enough to snag onto our clumsy hooks. While I bait my […]
I like to think I have it all figured out. Take the rifle. As long as I can remember, the gun was there, resting next to the exercise bike in our house in New York. My father probably assumed he’d hid it well, draping it under several terry cloth robes…
I was walking back from a parade in my hometown when I saw a house on fire, or it had been, was smoking itself like a cheap cigar. I went inside, no one stopped me. I was very attached to this house. I found small scraps, discs and ovals, of sheet metal and began […]
When she was born they cried, and they all knew they would. She came out crying too. This was normal enough; there was a baby in a hospital crying. She cried and looked skyward. Her mother, that is. Linda. A neck falls limp on its spine. She cried and didn’t know what it all meant. […]
Grandpa started having headaches the summer the tree fell on our house. Missy likes to joke that it was the tree that caused the headaches: that it somehow knocked loose something in his mind. I think part of her believes it. She certainly believed it back then. He came to live with us when Grandma […]
Tell me why you are here. Because my parents sent me here. And why did they send you? To help me “handle the situation.” And the situation is. . . My brother. The death of your brother. Something like that, I said. You seem uncomfortable. This chair’s okay. Uncomfortable with me. I thought you’d […]
Bina floated her finger over the cup like a magician with a wand, making circular shapes and crosses in the air. “Here it is, you see? It’s a grave, and a cross, you see, on it? That line here cuts through this one, and blends into this one.” Mira extended her eyeball muscles, stretching her […]
The world got wavy like that cheap trick in movies when a character dreams. It wasn’t a dream though, because I was fat, and my best dreams are when my girth disappears. I sat on the couch, heavy in the head, my wife learning Thai, the language program spitting sentences at her. Is the man […]
The gods’ hammers strike your eardrums. The vibrations shiver you from sky to earth. Your roots spread, gather voices into your trunk, where blue and green meet to create the symphony of the planets and the song of the worms, the whole Whitman universe rotating to the pulse of your sap as it rises and […]
“This is the oppressor’s language yet I need it to talk to you.” -Adrienne Rich You ask me how to spell “ain’t” and I want to write “a-i-n’-t,” those malleable scraps of sound welded into a graphite fixture for you to hang portraits upon: Momma’s scalded hand shooing you to the rhythm of “ain’t gonna […]
The one I seem to check into twice a month, greeting the desk clerk who never reciprocates. I walk up the rickety stairs, suitcase and life in hand and enter my room that makes bare bones sound voluptuous. I prop a pillow against the wall, sprawl out on the small bed and stare out the […]
She brings shampoo bottles home. I don’t remember if she did or not, but I swear she brought the sheets home too. I probably decided to build a fort. Whenever Dad was home, he lets us eat junk food, watch Tales from the Crypt. John & I didn’t mind the dark. Mother was always frightened […]
Only one chocolate cake in all the land. Only this one Sunday. There was some startling blue. White caps. Only at this window where the loch lives leaping in its song. Minutes before, sheep turds. I have a blue plaid wool coat. Father in a suit. Mother in navy or beige. Forty more years until […]
Dear Sirs, I got your letter some time back and I’m sorry for being so slow on the responding. I have given it a whole lot of thought these months now and decided to write you back. I wasn’t, but now I have (obviously). I’m not going to sign my name to this because I […]
Fingernails turning blue again, you remind yourself in a few months this will be just another moment on just another corner in just another winter you reference. Of all there will one day be a cure for, this isn’t on the list, this quick catch of breath in the chest as you glance up the […]
All-American heroes in flames, my right hand a god controlling the world’s freedom while my left hand presses the knob of the aerosol bomb – Aqua Net in all its hot purple splendor – slips, and Duke and Snake Eyes nearly collateral damage to Voltar’s char-bubbled plastic skin. No miracle will get our mother to […]
1 Love is the heart’s Jiffy Lube. 2 Love is the dawn coming up like last night’s chili con carne. 3 Love is blind, hearing impaired, and bi-polar. 4 The language of love has 32 different words for “laundry.” 5 Apostrophe to love: ′ 6 You see blossoms when the trees are bare? Leave some […]
Remember when I snapped at the sight of a sparrow? That plain bit of nature reminding me I can’t grow tomatoes or live without a microwave. I worry about the Strait of Hormuz. Will there be gas for the trucks that bring us our cool ranch Doritos? What about those coffins and swing-sets on TV? […]
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