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A Gardener in February Thinks About June

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I want to be that daring gardener who ploughs up her front yard -- to the horror of the Neighborhood Association.

A Locked Door.

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I look at that wall, it has piss-stain yellow paint and water scars from several years of leaky pipes. I say I wouldn’t mind that, if he took out some of that wall.

Constable Pulce and the Sunny Dystopia

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Alessandro was no ordinary demon (what demon is?), insofar as he had Constable Pulce's number. In demonly fashion he had Pulce's number in a way Pulce himself did not.

Rose Gold

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He hasn't had a wedding ring in years. When George's knuckles began to swell — a little arthritis — his ring dug into his finger so bad his wife Loren took him to the ER and had it cut off. The ring, not the finger. He never knew there was a tool to cut rings,…

Aforementioned

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I flung the basketball at the hoop and Cooper shagged the ball. He was the luckiest bastard I knew. ...

Table for one

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Black tagliatelle with squid and funghi porcini. He didn't understand why they called it a special, it had been in the menu since day one they had opened.

Just Kidding

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Your place is extra. No it isn't. It is, baby. The man was as aroused by her discomfort as he had been annoyed by her laugh. She wasn't laughing now.

The "Just Do It" Moon

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The calls come in a few times a week. When the unknown someone calls Safety Now, Radon Testing and Elimination Headquarters, Mrs. R. wonders who it is that just sits silently on the other end of the line. She wants to say, "Look, if you're a bill colle

Life during Wartime

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Nothing good comes from being lowered into a well to take a photograph, boy

The Great San Francisco Poetry Wars, 6

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When I got word from Mary Jo, she warned me that Mitchell Parkman was out looking for me with a butcher knife. I knew immediately what I had to do. I packed up my things and sold the Pepsi van and moved up to a room on Regent Street in Berkeley, all the w

A Little Evil Will Do You Good: Kansas City Jazz

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When the Borgias ruled Italy they had murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love and 500 years of democracy, and produced the cuckoo clock.

Our Beautiful Sadly Revolving Broken Wheel of a Heart is Sleeping in a Ditch Somewhere

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The planet looks so peaceful from space doesn't it? Want a blue Gumball? Like a pancake batter with bluish dye mixed into Its big yellow bowl and carried out by a winking Victorian Butler. Like a bowling ball with just the right Weight for your…

Heart of Gold

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"Cooperation and sharing could eliminate poverty."

Daddy, Can I Have A Puppy?

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Dad must have walked around with me 20 times, the store closed around us and finally he said I could have one. They were all in different poses and sizes, with black spots. Except one. One had silver spots.

My Favorite Breakfast

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When Mavis is satisfied that her new man and I have met her criteria, and at long last she goes, no one will stand between me and the relentless boredom of my own company.

Dead Woman's Shoes

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Loving you, I always knew, was a job I’d only get via a dead woman’s shoes. There you were, the recipient of pot roasts, fresh bread, at a loss amongst neighbourhood widows and divorcees. A tide of them rolled over you in calico blouses, cut off jeans

Trophy

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I remember ...all the teenagers offered no-longer favored CDs, last year's cell phones, third-place trophies, team jerseys, played-out videogame cartridges, and candy-colored miniature stuffed animals...

When I Was Young In the Suburbs

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When I was young in the suburbs, there was an empty lot across from our house. Bulldozers cleared the trees, shredded the bushes, and piled mounds of dirt three times as tall as I. But they never built a house.The dirt mounds, chain-link fences, and neon signs were…

Love Meal #3009

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His knife enters the Maui onion. He minces garlic and applies heat to pan and melts sweet cream butter and browns the garlic first and then he adds the onion and more heat, but it's time that will surely caramelize them. Salt and pepper and splashes of wine for the pan and…

Dear Helen

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I watched you knee deep in water with a little boy you were hitting.

77 Words About Saturday

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Another Saturday in April. Another set of scars.

Eve

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When God blessed creation, a ewe gave birth to Adam. When he cursed Satan, Eve hatched from a crocodile's egg.——In naming the animals, Adam marked them for death. His own name was a slow fire. Eve's was an inferno.——In the shelter of the Tree of…

Roy G. Biv

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Perhaps a blue person is more alive underneath than a red. Red is eye-catching and flashy, but blue is substantial, secretive. Of course, blood is red, and there’s nothing more substantial than blood, but we’re on blue at the moment, and the thought

Spilled Milk

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(I'd appreciate some feedback on this very weird story.) A Frosted Mini Wheat walks in to a bar...

Local Man Makes Good

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A junkyard Bison seems an odd choice over the usual dog, but it did the job--trampling trespassers, vagrants and unautorized salvagers with a violent and admirable efficiency

Wednesday late, Friday early

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I wrote this during a poetry workshop at the Atlantic Center for the Arts with Carolyn Forché. January, 2015. So much more has happened since that stunning week.

The Tree That Took Brooke’s Faith Away

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The thing was, though, she couldn’t shake the image of that dead dog she had found inside the black trash bag she thought could be first base, right before the twins said, Screw the game, let’s swing.

Please Blow Me.

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[TURN-ONS: willingness. TURN-OFFS: rejection.]

Our Neighbors

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It was with the departure of their last child that the Beazleys became grotesquely petty with each other.

Wasps' Nest

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Here’s how you do it. First you get a ladder, a long one.