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Pigs Fly

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You are rounded just the way the mountain is, out the window. The sun sets on both of you now. Three of you, I should say: the mountain, and you, and little Frank, who is currently batting my ear because he doesn't want to be named Frank but it's for your dead father,…

Let Me Tell You A Story

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I can hear the gardeners blowing leaves. They carry engines with long tubes that blow air in a great rush and send the leaves whirling forward as they advance. Fairies dance in a ring as the gardeners approach, oblivious to the whirr of their engines. The

Assiduity Twenty Five

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" . . . it's overcast with scattered rain along the Wabash River as I approach the federal correctional complex . . . "

Flowing, Flown

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Flowing, Flown In the field stands a jealous man with fifteen eyes stored inside the cuffs of well-worn khaki pants. His pockets pull with clinking dimes…

the fine hair on your belly

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On the beaches in the summer the fine hair rose up from under the material of your bikini and swirled around your deep navel, almost invisible to the naked eye, but not to the mind, which imagines everything funneling down into the center of your being,

The Black Madonna

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They say I am filthy. On this high pillar I perch like a stuffed avian relic, flightless, no prey. The horizon before me is broken by scuff and foreign tongue, by atomized evil. Pleas, and there are many, are answered by the only prayer I know, the one prayer, which…

Our Last Tea Party

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It’s the Tea, stupid. Drink up.

She’s Dead

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Hank: Yeah, the way her head was bashed in, it looks like someone really had it in for her. Did you call the coroner? Bill: Yeah. Boy, you couldn’t pay me enough to do the stuff those coroner and medical examiner guys do. It seems like

Smells Like Burning

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Stanley had a crush on Sarah. They were in Ms. Goldman's freshman chemistry class together fifth period. That day they were working on homework at Sarah's house while her parents were gone. Stanley was in heaven.“Break time!” Sarah woke Stanley from daydreaming,…

Night Of The Ghouls

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The following is a true story. Though it happened 35 years ago, it happened last night too. Everyday a new convert is welcome, a new tapestry begun. A new hunger is born.

Stroke One, Stroke Two, Stroke Three

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On Monday, May 7, 2018, at the age of 67, I had a stroke.

A Cool Dry Place PART 1

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There are times when she is heavy and times when she is light.

Consequently, I Rejoice

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The infinite terrifies.

Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery

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Picnicking In Mt. Misery Cemetery We breathe the damp shade, plum trees shining in a woodland where there are few wrong things I want to remember-- the steel fence of the power company blazing under an arc light is one. On this day of ripening fruit …

The $275 Root Beer Float

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That was some root beer float. It cost us a grand total of $275. She pulls up in front of Fenton’s Ice Cream Parlor and leaves the motor running while I jump out and run into the parlor. It was early evening. We HAD to have a root beer float. You

Wedding

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It was cold in the church. The Lutherans were freezing to death. The Catholics brought their winter coats.

A little bit of babysitting

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Roy Williams was his real name. It had been for the last 15 years. Since retiring from the Firm he’d lived innocuously in an apartment near the Old City walls of Dubrovnik doing the occasional quick job for them. You never entirely retired from the Firm.

Drummer Boy

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A door slams. The vibrations rattle through the floor, up his legs and into his chest. He can hear the yells, and the tears that mar her voice. Rat-ta-tatRat-ta-tat A door slams. Eyes closed while images of a life he will never live flicker on…

aromatic

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this bleeding sun, clove studded & seedless

Next Time, Academics

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I suggested when we passed the flesh shack that we turn around and that I go in and say to the sex workers that the Russians are fetching $3.5K per hour in Manhattan and it's private, unlike there at that road-side shack.

Sourballs

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Lights of human occupation burn/ in patterns like the growth/ of a bacillus, lethal and prodigious,

1973, what I wanted

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Not the torn magazine page, not the smell of ink, not the sweat of palm nor the froth of irish spring

Deaf

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box

Walking with the Moon

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I heard a voice. It was calling me as from a far-off cloud. I listened, holding my breath, and heard it again, though fading away, barely audible. If I hadn't known my name I wouldn't have decrypted it. Three hazy syllables clearly detached with a sigh between each of them.…

Reduced

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There I was at the OPEN HOUSE. It was easy, three doors down. The sign on the lawn said, PRICE REDUCED. The real estate lady said, “Back again? Thinking of buying”? I laughed. There were several couples there. People have…

The Frog

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Publisehd in Linguistic Erosionhttp://www.linguisticerosion.com/2014/08/the-frog.html When Jesus and Magdalene began to cross the sunflower field they met a group of boys, squatting before a rocky outcrop. Covered with…

Double Sonnet I

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We love our other animals

Control

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I’m afraid

When the Moon Becomes the Sun

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While most spread their time in other occupation, I traveled through books and grew my imagination. I knew endless bliss. I was a book eater. I would just devour books that I loved and slug through those I didn't, just to make myself eat the truths and li

Frozen Out

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It's a funny thing, watching a Snowman shiver