On the way home from Tina’s detention, air smokes like fire ate flowers, a whole field of wild, colors stolen for ash. “Why on Earth did you swallow those moths?” Tina’s mother asks. “You ate Lee’s entire science project. All stages!” she exclaims, before the car returns to silence. Tina remains numb like words were … Continue reading Luminous
WHEN THE FIRST SHELLS fall nearby, the early afternoon prayer is underway. I am explaining to young Khaled why his mistake was due to the incorrect verb usage. “You wrote, It rain in autumn. It should be, It rains in autumn. If the subject is he, she or it, the correct verb is rains, … Continue reading Autumn Rain(s)
“You don’t count the dead when God’s on your side.” ~ Bob Dylan Your tanks are pure metal, impenetrable, yet they stall out over open ground, gauges collapsing at the glint of a mine. Confused by local road signs, they bumble into nameless crossroads in deep snow, lose their way in the dense forests … Continue reading Tanks
OUR FAMILY LEARNED of my father's death, or non-death, I suppose, through FedEx. My son found the package abandoned in a puddle by the garage. My wife opened it at the kitchen table. I was in the other room and curious as to why she was not saying what was inside, and when I came … Continue reading Sincerely, Dad
Unzip a man,you’ll find a smaller man sleeping.Unzip that man,you’ll find a window that needs cleaning.Clean the window and look out,you’ll see the man’s dreamsfloating by.Unzip a dream,find something sort of likewhat we call God.Unzip that thing,find footprints leading nowherethat never end.Zip the man back upbefore he realizes.So I do as he sits thereacross from … Continue reading Unzip A Man
1. in the land of starving babies in the land of smokestacks and poison where wise men ring broken bells you start the song, but the car spins out of control crashes through the crowd, and the earth here is flat and thick with blood the factories sleep without dreaming the lovers are less than … Continue reading Traitor
AT 9:30 PM ON A THURSDAY, Skip’s phone rang. Not his cell phone, but rather his office phone, the phone only the sales guy from Rawlings ever called. The ring interrupted the lighting of a cigar. Not a Cuban, but a decent one nevertheless. Six games into the season, it was a bit early for … Continue reading Skip, Prez and The King of Dirt
IN THE EVENINGS after she gets out of the shower, which she takes with the bathroom door ajar so that you and a nurse can call to her every two minutes and make sure she’s okay, you help your daughter thread her i.v. tubes and monitor wires through the wide sleeves of her hospital gown, … Continue reading In 2020 Everyone Got COVID But She Got An Eating Disorder Instead
night falls quite suddenly over war in other countries, while the morning is fine here and biteable, clean as new coins. a young man, with control for his shift of a remote operation security gate, fiddles the buttons at a private estate entrance just on the outside of blackrock. another man driving a truck with … Continue reading Sunrise and Building-Cast Shadows
GOLETA, CALIFORNIA, is known as the Goodland — avocado and citrus groves, lush farms, Pacific beaches — but I only know it as the Postal Badlands. It’s 1981, I’m thirty-one, and I hate my job. My head pounds as I walk in. The mail processing plant overwhelms me. It’s larger than a baseball field, noisier … Continue reading Random Distribution