It’s not like I could tell anyone. I hum a song my mother sang to me as a child. A dressed-up soprano to calm the tail I’ve grown.

The old neighborhood, long paling in the shadow of greater Los Angeles, was reduced to two blocks in length and occupied only one side of Figueroa. It was the crumbling bastian of homes whose architecture remembered yet street-car bells clanging, watermelon farms and…

Why go outside where the gutters / are fraudulent and clogged with popularity?

There’s an account of roasting inward, holding myself like a rock inflamed, my inward joy rotting my veins. How was I supposed to go on loving anything after you? Like a pigeon hated at home, awaiting your passionate kisses? Knowing how your classical k

i learned all

It was then an angel was sent to provide assistance and guidance. After the first time, with the radio show, the woman could almost feel her presence. When she did not know what to do, or needed help or to encourage others, when her own will and words wer

"Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels."--William Carlos WilliamsThere is something beautiful I want to say to you that doesn't seem to make much more sense in a box of clever words like this one. It feels closer to…

Seamus’ hands are shaking now that once were still as stalking cats.

He'd always considered it his bus.

Between the commercials, the local news is rampant with fusillade of bullets going raving mad, driven by some Machiavellian brainfuck, or bombshells smiling down with angels in black; emoticons of solid metal and pride. But you would put your faith in…

The last of the Kazan Tatar Khans. Each dome represents a severed head.

With some of these guys it was like propping a kid on a training-wheel bike, then steering the kid down the street til he figured out what to do next. Tricks would come into the bar. Roanne had a smile for all but the dregs…

He said, “It was only after I broke my neck and even like maybe a year later that I really started realizing that I had something to say.”

On a Saturday I flew from murky air. My wings grown weak, I stole away from plundered nest, casual stings, and skillful barbs. In family's fold, I perch.

The broken car horn wailed for 40 days and 40 nights.