My father's heart stumbles like a punch drunk fighter. I don't notice until I'm bending over him to help him up. He's lying a little down the hill from his truck, his door open, the motor still running. The…

The air has its dark confessional, and I have mine. Hot is called raw by some, hate mixed with malice for others. I am only separated by this dark window of time from you, but you never feared the lovely or the lonely.

No snippets for you.

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

The Viper turns so quickly that Father's grabbing hand now faces its head instead of its tail.

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

a Ferris wheel gently rocks its last riders then dumps them to the ground.

He arrives at the appointed hour, driving up the dusty road in his '68 Ford truck. On the side is stenciled “Sampson's Farrier Service.” He parks in front of the barn. Patience watches from the front porch, where she has just set down a…

Under the dirty orange glow of sodium streetlights, the glistening pavement looks slick, but it’s only just wet. The mid-November temperature is cool—quite mild, actually, for this late time of year—still hovering in the upper 30s—so far posing only the

Clare sits bolt upright in the hard plastic chair, warily tracking every passer-by. In her lap, Kim’s hair is damp with sweat, dark blonde curls melting against her flushed cheeks. Clare absently strokes the length, soothing both of them.

If we thought that love was gone that out of sweetness none remained

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,…

...and he would stumble from bed in a panic and fling the toothbrush at the mirror cursing all the while "fuck fuck why can't I forget her".

They left me on a gurney for hours...

I remember being sent a picture once from one of my old roommates, Louise, back in Chicago where I came from. The photo was taken when she’d come out for a visit to California. In the picture I am sitting on the front stairs of my house in the Rockridge