He’d introduced himself and gotten to chatting the man that chaired the local board of education. He’d been to the meetings and was invited to events and then a ceremony and then a barbecue. So he donated money that bought books for the library, and ran himself a successful seat on the board. He still…
Sometimes at night there’s a procession of headlights in the windows, unceasing, and each passing light contains voices and thoughts from the television and textbooks and daydreams of all the things you’d like to do. 12:361:173:19 you give up and open your eyes but it doesn’t seem to make a difference, as though you’d been…
Of the things I enjoy most — new cities, quiet reflection, strange drunks — it’s writing I miss the most or feel the least fulfilled in. Not that I don’t write most nights, bad poetry, novels that went in wrong directions and short fiction I never completed. Projects drawn out to burdensome months trying to…
Summer sat in the heat watching day dreams play outof festivals and barefoot fields, of sleeping in moonlighthearing soft ocean tides, and the morning damp on ourclothes. We were the silhouettes in the sunlight, love burning freeon highways and skylines, desert peaks, bikini lines,and bad jokes reciprocated and the confidence to tellour secrets in bright…
There’s a man scrambling to climb back onto the ice where he’s fallen in. A friend extends a hand, and helps the sopping fisherman back onto the ice. The fisherman takes a moment to come to his senses, water running out of his sleeves and his vest pockets frosting stiff. The fisherman looks at his…
The sacred babe of your mother’s eye glowing gold of train sets and playgrounds and your stuffed Benji to hold so closely over a flame in the kitchen and the heat only comforts your spite. These are Tuesdays in bed past bus stops and scholarships and a coffee liquor stolen from the kitchen’s top shelf….
How far does an ocean go of troubles –how long till the seabird finds its perch. How many miles Mr. Dylan,dear Jesus,the context of a word with no sentence. The tides are dark and the beaches lie quiet,not a star in the sky to compassbut a roar of what must always crash down. For as…
I lost my first tooth at 23,a long time coming,a black stone whenever I spoke.There were aches in my knees and knobs on my back,knots curdled and sick in my belly’s pit. Cancer? Tuberculosis? Liver failure?All three. Sweating profusely,interviews and meetings,executive discourse turning to my sins: Masturbating in the neighbor’s bushes,stealing mother’s pills,not staying late…
All that’s left to remember is the feeling of faces, three thousand miles from touch. Etches left in a sketch erased: Carefully held on a Greyhound, folded along creases, slipped into a shirt pocket close to heart. That animal bore no animosity but in a moment flared its spite, flared the impulse to bleed its…
I’ve picked the wrong major,ten minutes into the second classI can already tell thatthis isn’t the place for me: Latte cups and politics,scarves and Doc Martens,soft spoken emotions.This flower is a metaphor for your trauma. And the Professor has asked me to share my thoughtson a particular subject,on a beautiful tragedy. Tennessee Williams, by god,…
Mick's Neon Fog 