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Morning and Arachnophobia

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...Rabidosa rabida- no spinner/ of webs but a quick and cunning solitary hunter. Anxiety overwhelmed

Intrepid Explorer

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The Intrepid Explorer recounts his travels for the benefit of subscribers to the Magazine of the Museum of Everything

Nocturnal Bypass

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As I fall to the ground I realize that in a few moments I will be experiencing a new kind of pain. The last pain. The last pain I will ever feel.

Go ahead

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Sit right down in the chair. It's a glider, see? Smooth and easy movement without that annoying head-swing you get from a rocker. And easy to get out of, unlike a lounge chair. Relax. "Reba" reruns will be coming on in a minute.

Centuries of Falling

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I am falling, falling out of my body, falling like midnight onto mice.

The Tourists

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He thought of his field trip from the previous year, of Prague’s museums, statues, squares, architecture, restaurants, and various modes of transport. The town offered none of these and surely no cinema, no crowds of people, not even an old church.

A Poem for Chris Toll

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we all die from the bottom up

Split second

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When people talk about the end moments when one's life flashes before his or her eyes, they often refer to time as slowing down. I can attest to this phenomenon during my final moments, before the collision: the song playing on the radio, the squeal of tires and flash of…

The Birthday Jump

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I remember the first & only time I parachuted it was 1964 my 16th birthday a rite of passage if you will from the old man an aerospace engineer & former WWII B24 bomber pilot I practice-jumped from oil barrels taught how to fall back then when the time came…

Sleeping Apes and Washing Dishes: What I Learned From Magazines This Week

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Eat blueberries every day and you'll live to be a 92 year old mogul. Really.

Mankind vs. The Undertaker

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Her boyfriend is into U.S. presidents and professional wrestling. He is reading biographies of both occupations and says this helps him to appreciate gray area, decisive action. Lives of great men, he explains.

Downland Ballad I :Photo-disintegration

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Like a distant memory of past expectations I wander through past journeys, delineations chew on the fresh air like a discontented Wordsworth now free, free to roam where I will..

Sleeping Bag Whiskey

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indelicate, as everything arrives at once.

M. Nerveux Chronicles: Toad Suffers a Bad Business

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Herr Toad smokin'

The Mujahideen

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Eighteen-year-old Svetlana Kabalevsky was now the widow of the poet Dmetri Kabalevsky, soon to be another widow-whore on the Moscow highway.

How to Cheer Up a Sad Song

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It's one of the most difficult problems of aesthetic philosophy: What do we mean when we say that a song is sad? None of the big names--Aristotle, Kant, Croce–Benedetto, not Jim–come close to answering it.

The Bowery Scene (Memoir, 1981; edited by Charlotte Curtis)

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It is easy to look out on the Bowery and say, "There are the bums." Encountering one, however, even one who asks to "bum a quarter" or tells you he's "on the bum" the word "bum" slips away in one's mind...

Dream Boats

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The Inauguration Day Windstorm had blown out half the downtown lights to celebrate its twenty-first birthday. Two old friends flecked with gray snow and white hair sat on the boulders that kept the Sound from sweeping away Myrtle Edwards Park. Look at all the…

Pen Pals

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Sitting together at Starbucks, we composed a long love letter which we've been mailing back and forth to each other, signing our name upon each receipt and returning it for the last nine months and it has grown to eighty seven pages, barely fitting in a shoe box.

Deus Ex Machina

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He rolls in unbidden across the stubble fields / Old acquaintance astride a newly booming cloud/ Under sky an alien shade of strawberries whipped/ Her watch stops ticking out the rest of her/ scheduled breathing poses

The Bludgeoning of a Burgeoning Young Artist

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There was an implicit understanding, made clear by Athena's gentle stroking of Freddy's silky blond hair, that he would share her canopy bed with its frilly fuchsia pillows. He didn't mind this, despite despising the color of the pillows.

The Cosmos as Gerunds

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There is no there or where but rather/ trajectories of probability

Time Change in Florida #2

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Time Change in Florida #2 Sapped, yes. But not finished. Not yet.So what if I mostly live in my head?Who says I have to be out running aroundimproving body income outgo technical savvy? The dizzy awe of a Southwestern …

Mind-Body Split

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The mirror can never talk back/ unless corrupted creases of the brain/ and its recombinant physical maladies// elect to answer...

Modern Teleology

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little curly moustaches

Lullaby

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I never meant to shipwreck you, I didn't even know I was singing out loud. I just stood on my rock a little too boldly, and hummed a tune you wanted to hear.

Rope & Bone '86

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His shirts he hangs on the back of the chair, one on top the other so they won't wrinkle.

Fractional

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Fine gradations of the fractional/ fissure the eggshell whole we crave

Capital Offense

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They can’t exterminate the poor just yet

When Bad Things Happen To Other People

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Years ago, I was involved in a freakish tragedy so startling and heartbreaking that it made the front page of not only my local newspaper, but “People” and “The National Enquirer.” I'm not going to tell you anything about it. This means that…