In another life, he could be one of those beautiful moths with markings on its wings that look like faces. In this life, he’s content to be a constellation. Or so it seems between stars, where silence scours the universe and nothing is its own reward, where night is a ribbon in his loved one’s hair. Recently Banned Literature, April 22, 2010 In Another Life April 21, 2010 . [ […]
A little bit of coffee, a little bit of soap. Hand on the bell cord, eye on the rope. April 12, 2021 . Dream Fragment, 3:45 a.m. A young man, of sixteen or seventeen and a stranger to me, leads me to a table, atop which is a curious arrangement of small objects, seemingly of a scientific nature. “If I die,” he says quietly, and with the utmost reverence for […]
I don’t mind having to wear a mask in public. After all, I’ve worn so many in my life. And none of them ever really hid anything. April 10, 2021 . We Meet Again Yesterday we were at the grocery store when a woman about our age came up to me and said she loved my beard, and then started patting and stroking it lightly, with a gleam in her […]
The water in your glass is ageless and timeless. It has been around the world. It has filled the ocean, washed over rocks, sustained life, and quenched the thirst of saints and madmen. It has memory, and it responds to gratitude, love, reverence. It responds to melody. It responds to bitterness and anger. Experiments have been performed that show this is true. Its structure changes. Water that is loved and […]
What to say, except that words betray their meaning, and that their betrayal is what we understand? This? that even if they were clay, we could never hold them in our hand? † † That is, if the betrayal isn’t ours of them. Recently Banned Literature, April 23, 2013 . [ 1071 ]
All these years, and the old bank building still blushes in the morning light, her stern face warming a color at a time. And there’s a story about her, with a rose, and a hat, and a ribbon, and a meadow. It seems in her youth she was wooed by the saloon across the street, where Granddad drank and talked and smoked. But her old man was practical: the saloon […]
Over the rise, past the cemetery, through the orange grove in bloom, on the Sunday morning side of the barn, the old rusted car your uncle drove, weeds through the floor board, cracks in the wheel knob, heaven’s own smell, the slowest kind of smoke. “Heaven’s Own Smell” Recently Banned Literature, May 21, 2014 . Crazy Old Widow The crazy old widow keeps a vineyard of gnarled old men arms […]
Up to their necks in genesis, dandelions sing psalms to my knees. April 7, 2021 . Heirloom A gray, quilted sky, snug to all four corners. A flight of geese for embroidery. Recently Banned Literature, April 21, 2014 . [ 1068 ]
daybreak / a singing robin / sees my toes / then sings a little louder Canvas 874 April 12, 2017 . [ 1067 ]
A trip to Safeway to pick up prescriptions for my mother: sunflowers, in six-dollar bunches by the door; rotten eggplant neatly stacked in the produce aisle; hard tomatoes and wilted bell peppers at prices few people can afford. And I think, There used to be a field here. Oh, what I could do with a field just a quarter of the size of the Safeway parking lot. The dreams I […]
