HE WAS TWELVE the first time he ran away. It wasn’t a home – which carried an inference he couldn’t yet begin to fathom. It was a house – sitting atop a hill in a neighborhood, population 6,000, thereabouts. A wide dirt road, ripe with rocks and rubble, wound through the neighborhood. This was not … Continue reading Highway Blue
It’s made its nest here in the central mind. It spreads its metal wings, and lays its plastic eggs leaving its engine on — you scarcely hear the whisper of your wife even though every window’s closed, the moon passing alone, the last of stars extinguished by the haze of morning, before the first long … Continue reading The Machine
the word that always springs to mind is d e s t r o y — hot fire licks my soot-clogged throat, sluggish cells struggle upstream in syrupy veins, & the perpetually peeking sun drowns me like a rash & sloppy pour inspired by tepid dreams, icy shame, & a half-forgotten past that haunts me … Continue reading The Magic School Bus slipped inside me but never broke its way back out
TOM LINED THE CROSSHAIRS of his Ruger’s scope on the hump of tattered gray-and-brown hair. The arched back peeked above the snow bluff, moving ever so slightly, the head of the creature likely burrowing in search of a meal. It was mid-winter when the snow was deepest and food scarce. Animals had to be resourceful. … Continue reading American Jackal
She wears jeans with flowers and lace and watches the fascinating games of men, football, soccer, sundry other competitions. She wants to write the ballad of too late, where they strike iron when reality has cooled way down and merely makes a sound but not much difference, all the while knowing that, though nobody looks, … Continue reading Game Night
BOTTOM OF THE 4TH and we’re up two, but they got guys at first and third, two out. We were out of the inning but Palmer dropped a third strike and threw the ball into right field trying to get the runner at first. From the dugout I can hear him muttering, “Fucking stupid, fucking … Continue reading Coaching
I’m not like you, I think as I timidly take one of three remaining seats. I already know I am mistaken, though. I am the white-haired woman with the walker and the fluid bottle attached to her arm and the belly spilling forward. I am the skinny blonde sitting next to me. I am the … Continue reading On The Bus
EVERY MORNING, I GET OUT OF BED.Sometimes, I think I might not. That it might be better for me to pull the covers over my head and burrow deep like a hedgehog until summer combs its fingers through my hair. But I resist, because I am a human girl and it is only March. I … Continue reading Earthworm Buffet at the End of the World
By then I was tired of your ballet jokes. Our Thirty Years War started with a sequence of red roofs and a glimpse of the Žižkov TV Tower. Kundera called Prague a disappearing poem. I don’t know. I drank Velvet beerwith girls in Slayer shirts; You drank boys. The moon drank blood. The two Josephs … Continue reading Friends & Neighbors
I TOLD THEM I’d be the one to bring her down. Capiche? Fine, they said. Sure. You do that. But what’s the hurry now? Everything’s frozen solid up there. Capiche? It might as well be Ice Station Zebra up there and there’s no by God helicopter. I said that doesn’t matter and they said just … Continue reading The Burden