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Red

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Erwin came into the kitchen through the back door and went straight to the sink to clean up. Black mud and dried blood crusted his fingertips and caked the callused whorls of his knuckles.  He used the round of strong-smelling soap he kept for…

The MacGowans Flee West

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Some believe the Scots were encouraged to emigrate, hired guns as it were, to Ireland to civilize that population. If that's the case, we would see it as another evil English trick. In any case, we MacGowans are Scots Irish and Protestant.

hair

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A strange and unexpected shift has occurred.

Hand and Thumb

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Often we sit in silence and age. We are observers of dust, fashioning ourselves into antiques.

The Loss of a Child

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I watched as the light fled from your eyes, No slowly dimming lamp,

Poetry: Bizarro

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I think theorems and hypotheses but all that comes out is punching and smashing frustrated hate flows where I'd prefer to know love.

Momo and Me

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Momo told me not to mind her, but I did. At night, after he'd tucked me in, I could hear him on the phone in the living room, talking for a long time. Early this morning he woke me up and gave me my backpack. ‘Put some clothes in here', he said. ‘We're going on a trip.'

The Clock Man's Trouble

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A lowing cow cracked open the darkened room like the yawn of a gravid alien.

Specimen Subterranean: A Review

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. . . the greater length of the so-called “Montebaldi Corridor” can still be walked without the least exposure to direct sunlight as long as the traveler is not active from 9 am to 3 pm local time.

To Live It Again

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She began guiding Penny’s arms, whispering movements through her body. Memory and experience sang through every fiber of their being. The song had become her life.

Alluvion

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Why'd You Come Back?

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But there, up the street, just coming into the corner of the window, someone was in the middle of the road. Walking literally down the middle, dragging one leg like it was heavy or broken, carving a fat line next to the skinny one the good one made.

Papa's Parrot

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He wasn’t there for the beginning or the end. In the beginning, he was still a wild thing. Nothing more than a voice in the chorus of the Dark Continent, back when it was a thing of terrible beauty and attracted people like the old man; people who breathe

Woman

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When you move to the music of a woman

The Field Guide: Olivetti

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When you last produced writing on a manual typewriter, was it before or after your first sexual experience, or maybe during? Manual or otherwise. Which do you recall with more enthusiasm...

NOVEL EXCERPT: Jimmy Gollihue

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Jimmy Gollihue awoke to the howling of a bloodhound, a long voice from up the mountain, and the baying of the dog pulled a keening lament from his dream of the highway.

forever

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over tea & saltineshe read melike an obituary

The Dead in Paris, Complete

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Did we get Jihadi John?/ And the highway to Mosul?// What’s the score?

Turtle Summer

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He was her summer fling, the first cock to crow when the sun rose over her tequila smile.

Half a Lotus

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An Ayurvedic astrologer tells her that she is a child of India. Is a girl born in Indiana a mistake of just two letters on a Scrabble board?

Mama's Boys

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A pale face was illuminated by the street light. A voice rasped, “Charlie?” “Do I know you?” “It's Bill.” The side of his little brother's thin face

Good For The Ducks

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It's dawn. It's quiet on the pond in the Public Garden. The light is calm, the pollution is mild, and everything is still,except for the occasional cruising taxi. It's the beginning of spring-- tulips out, leaves…

Blowing Up While Fading Out

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It calmed the guilt in my heart while kids reveled, laughed, and "made time" with the neighborhood girls on that final night of freedom. No one would talk to those girls again.

Tattooed Hands

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A 1960’s of walking sugar beet fields to remove the rogue bolters by hand and on other days painting the ironwork of cattle sheds with red oxide. Then a 1970’s when the self-inking explosion of tattoos on his hands and then his body began.

this time it really may, quite possibly, be the end of all of this ambivilence

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her heart just nodded knowingly ....yes, dear

At Play in the Fields of the Lord

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Rothko explored horizons,/ blurring figure and ground/ by omitting the figure.

When a Bowl Hits a Tree

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You would think when a bowl hits a tree the sound would be fierce, a loud clatter as stoneware explodes on birch bark dispersing shards in daffodils and grape muscari, but the noise is gentle, a thudding clink like empty bourbon bottles rattling hollow in…

The Beat of Sorrow

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See a girl like Lily sitting offstage in a wooden chair in a fourth-rate club somewhere, crying, holding on so hard to so little, and as it breaks your heart to watch; forgive me. Understand me. You can’t rescue us. We all deserve more.

Squirrel Boy, You Are My Toy

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unbury yourself from the silt and give me some seal love.

Bitterness: Poem

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Standing hard at the windowCold clouds move, slowBlue horizon in the distance—It's just a slice of blue.All this beautyI miss it in the bitterness.I'm consumed by the missingThe emptinessThe unfairnessAlways some unfairness cropping upand capturing joy.Glancing high…