The Quickest Way
In line for morning coffee at the hospital cafeteria. “Eventually,” says a woman in scrubs to her co-worker, “you run out of food. Then what’re you gonna do? Scrounge for quarters and go eat...
Author: John P. O'Grady
Cemetery Signage (as seen while driving by)
“For Sale By Owner” “Vacant Land” “2.1 Acres For Sale or Lease” “Model Home” “If You Lived Here You’d Be Home By Now” “Open House” “Historic Property” “Price Reduced” “Foreclosure Sale” “Faso For Congress”...
The Big Move: A Reminiscence
Where to begin? Looking, packing, getting distracted, whatever happened to that purple ironing board we used to have, or that hardcover first edition of ’Salem’s Lot Steve signed for me at Maine back in...
Eye of the Meadow
Blue-eyed grass my favorite, she said, comes to me through my own blue ones gliding by the heart as it finds its way out into the world that golden wing you see there on...
No Unnecessary Harm
Rain cold oh this spring ticks galore perched ready to pounce from where they sit like buddhas on the tip of every blade of lush grass bloody blood meal that’s all we are to...
Squeaks Even If Punctured
“Stuffing free” writing you get what you pay for verbal impaction extractor a couple stacks to read or peruse through bunch of bookmarks and marked up pages of manuscript going nowhere end of word...
Today is Japhy Ryder’s Birthday
One time Eric Paul Shaffer and I decided to climb the Matterhorn. Not the one you think but the one right in front of you when you stand on the edge of Bridgeport, California...
Perseveration
It weighs heavily. Something must be done. Set the Havahart®. Catch it! Not the bunny you were expecting. Something else is in the snare. Something broken, bitter, lost—a possum, maybe, or its image—on its...
No Respite
We all fall down. Like that. The time in the supermarket burial ground, among the tilting shelves or stones, the abandoned mop or mower in the middle of the aisle of tall weeds, the...
Nothing’s Settled
A week of rain, then it’s “Severe clear!” as the pilot was wont to say. Mornings like this, not a cloud in sight. Soon enough, wouldn’t you know it, they gather. The forecast is...