Sometimes I envy Grandpa Phil, sitting in a well-lit room in Fort Lauderdale, gently sinking under the faded ripples of an Alzheimer’s sunset, his memories only reappearing in brief, almost incoherent kaleidoscope bursts. Sign me up.

Make paddles of his hands Use his skull to bail Rig his thigh bones for a mast And his skin to make a sail

Love and headphone static radiating like an old address sticker peeling from a rusty mailbox.

And it whispered like any wood. And the blade moaned when he got too deep and tried to cut too much. And as the dead parts of him came off, in tendrils and dust, the man's chest began to move, like the hands around his heart had let go.

death is certain

One of the biggest mistakes he'd ever made was licking that light post, the one just outside the x-rated theatre on Delaney Street. He'd attended church that night at the chapel down the road, said, "The sermon set my hair afire," and he meant it, literally. I heard…

If I wrote a war novel my wife would be killed off before our relationship figured out our differences. Like her being really Asian and me being just so-so Asian.