The jigsaw puzzle had just been completed, all one thousand pieces of it, a few of the sections the paint worn thin from multiple uses and now in full display after many days, and many hands working to fit all the pieces together. This puzzle would remain on the table for a few days while … Continue reading Jigsaw Puzzles
Like rain-worn newspapers whose ink has leaked out, so does my soul as the words “you have relapsed” leave the lips of a finely-ironed coated man. The plans of hotel bookings, interviews and catacomb crawls crumble like last spring’s browning brittle petals, preparing for early March’s windstorms that will finally pluck them from their string-like … Continue reading Frail
“I DON'T KNOW what happened, Ms. Garcia,” a student might say, holding up a vocabulary test marked in Amanda’s signature green pen. “It was like I’d never even seen the words before.” Amanda understands—words are tools; they can hurt you. First came Addiction. Irreconcilable. Divorce. Then, just as she got to Readjustment, came Chemotherapy. And, … Continue reading Patchwork
same as any other spring the crow beaks drip red and a wishbone is bleaching on the window sill - it’s nothing like blood, I know that now. I am kept up early by the dry snap of branches and the deer collapsed on roadside lupines licking at their wounds. I’ve held a lot of … Continue reading A Study of Skeletons / A Cherry Tree Picked Clean
A slight shiver of the trees is considered by windologists as a mourning, not to be confused with a vibrant tousle of a leaf, which is, not surprisingly, its opposite: joy. A bird, flying just below gale-force winds is persistence. Although, any bird flying above such winds is called, well, I’m not sure there’s a … Continue reading How to Translate the Wind
I hold the hummingbird with both hands and in that expanse it seems to me a ripple in the water — a reflection fractured like watermelon tourmaline with a sledgehammer. there’s no good reason now for dinner. I do not want to eat with hands that felt a heart’s last flutter — that smoothed the … Continue reading Watermelon Tourmaline
Fatherhood seeds the reign of vulnerability: Steel-toe boots demand calloused but open palms, and the never-ending inning birthed a gritty bullpen. They’ve tweaked the mound but it’s always been like this. Fortunately, when clouds look like liger cubs, a maple tree can become a barrel, and is our son waiting to learn a launch angle … Continue reading Alliance
He and his wife treated us to baseball, Good seats on the first base line. We cheered home runs with them, Shared popcorn, joked, talked family. Time passed, and there were gaps. Until I saw them just now in the drug store, As his cool, spotted hand gripped mine With a “heyyyyy …” And we … Continue reading Years
Honey-flavored lozenges coating our throats, you split a mango in the tree shade by the lemonade stand, fleshing out the football shaped seed. Juices running down our chins, you begin a burial ceremony for all the mango seeds we have eaten since June — lumps of fresh dirt — little graves — as if all … Continue reading A Honey Summer Fruit Promise
It’s actually so easy. to lie if you’re doing most of it to yourself. I don’t like to practice. I think I’ll buy the one with pine tree resin. I think I’ll drink it in the skatepark. I would kiss you here. I would tell you about my astigmatism and how it makes the skyline … Continue reading Poem In Which I Experience One Emotion And Buy Craft Beer