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We knew this year would be different because we bought bikinis. We had never worn bikinis before. Our swimsuits had always been shiny one-pieces with stripes, or polka dots, or tiny yellow fish. Not this year. It was a hot summer and the department store was overly …
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I attended the burial of our affair when I found her notebook— maybe it should be called her diary—that she had foolishly left on the deck of my beach house where she stayed while I was on that short trip to Chicago. Numb at first, unsure how to proceed, I went…
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“Easter’s coming,” my wife says. “Should I dress as a bunny or a chicken?” she asks. She means for the costume party.
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COLLEAGUES, ACQUAINTANCES SUSPECT MARK ZUCKERBERG IS A MASKED VIGILANTE
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The Rapture comes and goes unannounced in carbonated soda bubbles spicing the air.
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Last night Jim taught me how to catch forks. Meaning, he taught me how to throw them. But he called it catching forks. It was late, and we were low down 3rd street, south of the Bay Bridge, the baseball stadium, all the people and cars, on top of a warehouse. There were a…
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...the scream and the face...
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"Thanks for the wild sex--let me know if you have any problems with the lint trap."
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Eat me so I can sink in your mouth, my paper fraying along the sharp topography of your tongue, lodging in the holes where your teeth used to be. There, I will storm an infection until your mouth inks my words.
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No one had told the newer tenants that the dead would be given votes, and they were in an uproar: it wasn’t legal; it wasn’t fair; it was creepy.
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“So, do you still think I'm hot? I mean, do you think men still find me attractive?” Jenny asks. This is never a good question to answer, much less entertain. I know this as surely as I know anything. Still, let's break it down. I am married. Jenny is…
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I stomped up the steps clearing my shoes of snow. I was wearing my Rooskie fur hat with the ear flaps, and I kept it on when I went inside.
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When a multinational big box furniture store opened just off the expressway outside the city selling all the same products at greatly reduced prices, they contemplated the possibility of closing their store.
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“Life is on life’s terms,” she told me once. Her arm, wrapped in clear cellophane, was freshly adorned with a green-pigmented sand-dollar: a living shell.
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The coin, so little, the watch chain, the youth, the fading softening speech, each hand and finger, the panic modeled on your own eyes, the ashtray, certain stumps along the way, the long distance, the odd feather, the jazz rope gone,…
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unwrapping
the gauze from her wrists....
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My buddy had been in the computer business, a systems analyst. Surely there would be some mention of him online. But there was nothing. Nothing, that is, until I saw the obituary.
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Part of me feels like a wounded animal surrounded by hungry cougars. Another part of me feels like being mauled by a cougar might not be that bad. A third part of me wishes he could punch the second part of me in the face.
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... and photos of friends from former lives: the Wolfman; Drac; the Mummy; my ungrateful Son; even my gold-digging, coat-tailer ex-wife.
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But I don't see the cabinets, or know how to put the 4 chapters he's talking about today into the drawers that are invisible, floating, above his bed he's been in for a year, me sitting next to him, becoming a spinster.
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145122
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There she is. A paper doll of me. The dress, the lilt, the self-hatred. The crowd thins and swells in want of a scene. Conversations begin, pretend, then halt. My gin and tonic sweats into my hand and I lick at the…
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Mr. Wazzeldot has seven legs. He lives very comfortably. He likes to sit by the fire. There's a large cushion for a chair, and in the evenings, he sips his Bloody Marys. I know because I visit him…
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It is within my nature, and many others I know, to cling to what’s consistent and certain: the battles fought in the war for survival and the organic camaraderie borne in the trenches. Sometimes the quest and the people we commiserate with along the way
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From my place, down here amongst the earth, we have many names for you.
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I stole forth dimly in the dripping pause
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The leaves were meaningless because they were no longer connected to the trees.
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I don’t know what to do with all this money flowing from my books.
It’s burning a hole in my literary pocket.
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To tell the truth, I can’t complain. Look, lots of people have it tough. I don’t have it tough...
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