Flip backward the calendars and replay the static-ey memories from sometime in the 80’s and 90’s. A collection of pictures, as in the kind we used to stack once developed from the entire roll of film; posed family portraits mixed among the random and mostly terrible action shots. The dated furniture and décor, strings of…Read more »
Townie Hotdog Hearse
I claim the happy fortune of having spotted our townie hotdog hearse on two occasions. Someone has bolted a mastiff-sized fiberglass hotdog to the top of a hearse. The fiberglass hotdog is of quality construction. I’m convinced it is not simply an object procured by chance from some second-hand warehouse. It is shiny and new…Read more »
The Highwayman’s Hitch Knot
Something is strange about the way hurts in life corrupt me inside, later to unfurl in confusing and unexpected directions. My feelings wrap and jumble like poorly tended rope; a mess of buried ends and loops lacking purpose and order. A thread of bitterness with no discernible track or pattern to the casual glance. Picture…Read more »
Desert Tender
Desert tender, you and I dwell in that parched scrubland of unspoken things, yielding broken things. Arid earth rends the clay into abrupt dry islands, irregular curved pucks of crumbling terra cotta, crags widening. There we dwell separate alongside the deep chasm. We are in a desolate spiritual place, a void of growth, movement, words.…Read more »
Stranger from Within
This Child, I say, we share a unique bond. My child, when I first enfold your tender body in my arms, I gaze with complete intrigue into your soft eyes and ask, “who are you, stranger from within myself!” So new that your breaths are still counted in number… you and I are sacredly wrapped…Read more »
Sounding Repentance
Somebody insinuated I was racist once. I was livid. This is my story. I offer it; let it fall from my open hands. In that memory I am enraged. Anger, that surprising product of sadness and fear, like opposing fluids in a jar, whirl into a cloudy suspension. Sadness and fear whip together into a…Read more »
The Ugly [Part II]
Within the time frame of a few weeks, my work friends decided to plan a party. Rather than have the party at the office, I invited everyone to come to my house. The week of the party, a coworker asked if they might also invite Melissa to come. She was not on the workplace email…Read more »
The Ugly [Part I]
Years ago I was working in office with my co-worker “Melissa.” She and I were friends. Despite our friendship though, something went terribly wrong. I picked up a bad habit. You see, I had begun to arrive five minutes late to work, every day. She began to call me on it every time. Now, chronic…Read more »
My Rosie
This is a picture of my maternal grandmother Rosalie. Here she is standing with Shirley, Juanita, and Frances, next to a B29 airplane, the sort she worked to rivet in the effort of WWII. The fact of her name, and that she was often referred to as Rosie, gives her poignant possession of the title…Read more »
Building
Good things are coming soon.