New fantasy alert: I could become the vice president of institutional giving, wouldn’t that be nice? A new kind of life, the face of generosity associated with an association’s deep charitable pockets, the closest one can get to being a real-life Santa Claus, without exploiting elves and mass surveillance. I can see the highlight of … Continue reading Starting To Be Mr. Nice Guy
Like someone starts with a swarm of arrogant notions clenched solid at a single point on the earth, near a river or a road: Maybe the consciousness stream from the shadow who smokes his job through another thin roll? Could be the coral vine screeding up the fissured side of a brick wall over the … Continue reading Plots for a Fresco On Planned Obsolescence
Today is a shoe. The lace loosens and has to be tightened again and again. It’s tempting to knot it. The sole worn against the daily routine erupts letting a toe stick out. You wonder if you can walk around with your tongue’s tip lolling between your lips. The headlines: storms will embrace homes at … Continue reading Today
perhaps we could find ourselves ritualistically shifting our bodies alongside the banks of Lake Michigan colored the blackest blue I've ever known. perhaps your hand will find mine in darkness and the tense leaves will release a sound under the footsteps of our own solemn smiling dances as I look into your darting eyes the … Continue reading Nobody Has Time For Art, But We Make Art Anyways
You had no right to be the first to die. I was the older. You should not have rushed ahead of me. You knew the days were counting down when I called and you said, “I’m chilled, need my sweater, call you back.” And didn’t. I waited two more empty days, all the things I … Continue reading Sisters
My mind is still as a stone, so now, just to be on the safe side, I’m launching into a couple of quick rounds of practice sleep. You never know when you’re going to come up empty handed. Naturally, ice is a slippery thing, especially during foxhole season, so don’t wait a minute longer to … Continue reading The Red Boat
Once, when I was a child, my family dog picked up a kitten in its mouth, punctured a hole in its neck and it choked on its own blood. I think I cried for weeks. I think I tried to pry the dog’s jaws open. I think I came running into the kitchen, limp corpse … Continue reading A Conversation With My Therapist
You thought someone was living inside the walls, laughing at you. Staring at you. Talking about you. You tore at your face until craters bled. Kept telling me something was hiding underneath your skin, crawling with fleas. When I woke up, found your side of the bed empty/cold, I thought I would discover your body … Continue reading Alex, The Addict
Puddles reflect the sun’s glare, the rising chorus of songbirds emerge into a morning in which pine boughs and maple branches hang free without the weight of snow. Along the path: a child’s mitten, the cellophane of a cigarette pack, an empty pint of cheap whiskey, a plastic grocery sack that rolled like tumbleweed during … Continue reading After The Snowmelt
A place pressed anonymously in a small gilt frame — an un-housed painting, like the artist’s still brush, or the stark canvas, too naked, too white. The hand’s left grasping for leaves from last year’s garden — where faint ideas, and the pause between gestures, remain like a van Gogh still-life. The storybook window is … Continue reading Painting Abstractions