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The Night

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her parents were gone they sat on the love seat side by side saying nothing the longest time

Some Kind of Change

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She was flying back in the morning, returning to a long-distance boyfriend I believed she had cheated on while she was here but didn’t ask about because I thought it would have been too obvious and somehow ungentlemanly.

GRACE

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The sand felt warm, the way it usually was on Saturday afternoons in Seaside Heights; face down on the beach under a hot July sun that burned my back and shoulders

Universal Theory #1: The 3-Step Secret to a Good Life

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1. Think up problems that don’t exist 2. Realize, suddenly, that they don’t exist 3. Elation

RETIREMENT

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Men have a way of doing that, Lord, why? I always thought retirement means you get to sleep longer. Nope He must arise early, make breakfast, after 40 years of eating mine. Next, he insists on coming with me to the market. When I try to…

A Taste For Music

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“Nothing we have here can stop them,” the Lumi said, “We were hoping there might be something in your world we might try.” “Even if we had something, how would I get it to you? ”We are working on that, in the meantime, will you help us?” I

Gone With The Wildebeest

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A recent book reveals that nature documentaries are staged. Shocked by such claims we went on location to discover for ourselves the behind-the-scenes manipulations and more. Director: “You'll spot the wildebeest, freeze, and then charge. Okay? And try to bring…

This is Why We Can Never Have Nice Things

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At age eleven, I murder the coffee table. I gouge with every available implement: thumbtacks, Lefty scissors, the plastic hand of my Barbie accomplice (who really should have known better). It is a slow death. In the end, there is nowhere to hide the body. When I am…

The Greatest Narcissist on Earth

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I forgot how masterful you are, way better than a pickpocket. After our meeting, I drove home with one hand. It felt funny but I figured I'd absentmindedly put the other in my purse or tossed it into the backseat with my jacket. In my…

Gathering

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In the office supply store on Union, Jeremy, the stock boy, shelves tubs of rubber bands. Tubs with an easy-access pop-top and a see-through container. If Hendy saw these tubs, she would think these particular rubber bands resembled anorexic gummy-worms,

Hat, Mouse, Tortoise, Zen

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I try to help my pet-mouse by dangling cheese from a piece of string in front of him. Or by making meow sounds. Sometimes, my pet-mouse wins, sometimes the hamster with the great body.

The Garden Heaters Of Kilburn

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when women’s hair shrinks into tight curly balls and sits on top of their heads like scrunches of wool, blowing in the wind, hanging from the mouths of recently shot deer.

The Burning Gulf

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None of us ever thought this would happen.

Window

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Can you write a 250-word story without using the letter "e"? Ruth's back is curving forwards, folding, softly caving into tomorrow.

February Fifth

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We've worked silence over / Like pros, our best work together.

Middle Age

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There are no city-chewed streets,/ only white and lilac blooming dogwood trees.

New Moon

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circa the early 90s, Buzz Aldrin and my father had been invited to a dinner at someone's house on Bainbridge Island and gotten lost.

Fatuous Dialogue #1

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—Was it true, what you wrote in that poem? —Pretty true. —What do you mean “pretty true”? Was it true or wasn’t it? —It was as close as you get to truth in poems.

Jack's

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We're not here for idle chit-chat, or ESPN, or fish tacos.

Confiding in the Airsick Bag

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In row nine, there was a lady on the window seat. Seeing the potential of space between us, I asked, “Mind if I take this one?” “Not at all” she said as if she hadn't a friend in the world, apart from the poor bastard now sitting in seat 9D.

Last Poem

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or the voice that wants/ to be inscribed/ forgets the sounds

The Trench

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His face was cold and hard as marble. Rudy’s angular features shuddered and twitched in the darkness.

Me And My Liberal Friends

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“Thank God The Yogurt Store Was Open!”. I knew this would cause cynics to seethe about me and my #FirstWorldProblems. While those less with the times or from many years of vanilla ancestry, might become racist themselves, indicating that I was suffering f

A Vicious Deer

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A Vicious Deer The man came across the hall to talk to us. He was buying some paintings. He had a white deer on a leash. Fosca (our Malamute) said: “That's a vicious deer.” She kept putting her paw on its shoulder. I said: “You bet

A New Notion about an Old Story

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A dark girl, quite poor, maybe three, maybe four, leaned on a statue of a horse and his man. (The rider rode him in place, but as if in a race.) Her dress needed patching, her heart needed smoothing. She'd tried to sell…

mary jane - snow white super girl

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holland's hope and hawaii skunk god's one true gift to mankind

Truth at a Bonsai Booth

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I envisioned bound feet of ancient Asian women who wore embroidered slippers that hid grotesque disfigurements.

Sgt. Nelson, KIA

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. . . she didn’t bow her head.

On reading the “Lives of the Poets” by Michael Schmidt

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And now its done! Five months read! This book is batoning in my head. Its eleven o'clock AM and hot as hell, even the breeze, billowing nets through the sliding screen adds sweat, cuts me down to size. I will needs again to…

A Marriage of Bodies

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In sleep their bodies drift between the sheets until they find each other.