Win for Life
Every week, each day. Grocery shopping. In the parking lot same old rusted-out pickup seen in same spot. Every week, each day. Works here. New York license plate. Confederate battle flag taped in back...
Category: The Word from Pandora’s Tavern
Days Gone By
Year end. You knew it would come to this. Out with the old, in with the older still. Days weeks months years: hopes and dreams. Opinions! Organized donors. Stacking the dead on top of...
Sleep by the Sea
Sleep by the sea. Dream a time of Little Bighorn. Historical signage. Untended grass land. Burial ground. Further the fence. Hills roll. Memory of you. Sleep by the sea. Grassy corridors. Inactive shooters. Historic...
The Garden: State of Limited Access
Once upon a time, yesterday maybe, having taken that journey on “tomorrow’s highway today.” Entry ramp. A means of departure. Tollbooths. Tractor trailers. State troopers. Riled motorists. Jet planes flying low over phragmites. Haste...
Transcript of a Medium’s Message
Last evening was the annual Christmas “Psychic Dinner” down the mountain at the Moon-in-a-Dewdrop Inn. I’ll bet they saw you coming, you say, but we go every year. Think this stuff is all a...
On Labels
Today at a supermarket in the Catskill Mountains I saw a bottle of vegetable juice adorned with remarkable labeling: “100% Juice with Added Ingredients.” What manner of adjective is this percent? I wasn’t totally...
Beauty Bare
This blazed path. Lovely winter light, clotting shade. Rusted border, collapsing fence. Gap in the grammar of the woods. Fallen limbs beyond memory. Forgiving duff and stone. Spare fading lines. Both ends tangled not....
A Tale of Urgent Care
“There, now that didn’t hurt a bit, did it? Would you like to see your blood?” She holds up a vial. “No, that’s okay. I’ll faint.” “Would you like a glass of water?” “Yes.”...
House Hunting
On a lark ventured into the exclusive listing of self—many rooms, musty cellar, dusty attic, cobwebs everywhere, sheets thrown over ugly furniture, sullen portraits beyond living memory and dour landscapes crooked with time on...
For the Record
“Each one,” they told us, and there were too many to count, “stands for something in the real world.” Meanwhile our milk was spoiling in cartons kept in stale cloakrooms. That was a long...