The Jester sat down on the edge of his mattress. He laboured to bring one gout ridden leg up to lay across the other. The jingle bell at the tip of his pointed toe mocked each serrated movement of his limb with a jaunty tinkle. He grabbed his ankle to arrest its…

Someone will labor to keep it alive/ although the body will want but/ to return to random particles

It’s the small stuff. Always. A conversation with a stranger, brief yet so connected it overwhelms you. These encounters can move me beyond my reality, little reminders that, if you just crack the window a little, something very special can blow in.

...dogs snapping at the brush as it spins this way, that way, eluding the slavering jaws by a hairs breadth. The fox twists and rolls, tries every trick, every last desperate one.

I almost kept him on the shelf with all the trophies.

My small kitchen has barely enough room to turn around in, yet I had the feeling I was being watched. When I experience it again, just seconds later, I realize it was eyes watching, actual eyes, not a camera or machine.

Let’s play a game. I’m thinking of a word. Do we have to?

It's true push often comes to shove

Dear Jackknife Ponderosa, I'm stupid. Let's move on. Let's move past the part where I complain, where I struggle with circumstance, where I display my petty arms, and shoot holes in the air. …

the array of regularly spaced wavering human forms floating upright seems to extend endlessly in all directions.

The box thuds at your feet: mug, plant, wedding photo, the 25-year pen.

Andalusia I. partners in sunset the hawk and I in ballet ..............................he:..........the small flame in the wind ..............................I:............the last tremor of grace the…

I wrangle word juice from the Oxford American, sighing at photographs of blues musicians with solemn lakes for eyes.

A group of nuns arrived in the middle of my first night at Hinsdale Hospital. I guess I must have dozed off when this odd noise, like curtains being moved, woke me up. At first I couldn't make out what that rustling sound was in the hallway outside my doo

writing because it's the only drug i havesick on sadnessas the weight of the moment crumbling around me comes down some sweet second inspires…