Mother’s Waiting He sits alone in the dark, lights off and lost in his own swamp of failed understanding. The kids are asleep, two of them, a boy and girl. He watches Late Night TV while they sleep, his wife dozing in bed, falling asleep with the lamp still on, the TV in her room
M.I.A. Mike Pulawsky was Army, but a consultant, not combatant, and he knew a lot about water. He’d been living in the village for ten days when it was attacked. Up until then, he’d been living with an old man who seemed to serve informally as a kind of mayor. Mike’s Vietnamese was good, and
Still Ill Bleach and peroxide fucked up, gave me stupid hair color. Off-white orange came shining into classroom. Late too because I had been slobbering in halls and glittering concrete. Too many pills to impress the girl with the Playboy bunny tanned in between her thighs beside a discolored mole.
“You got anything like this
Flight to Freedom For as long as he could remember, Ronaldo had imagined himself a woman trapped in a man’s body. Though he admitted it to no one, he often dreamed in lipstick and high heels, drifting through midnight fantasies of bubble bath and wifely duties, waking in the morning to a flat chest and
Filter Tommy had a big one on the line, big enough to tug the bobber under and strain Tommy’s arms, anyways. He said something about the effort making him sweat, which he probably expected me to believe. He was grimacing, I’ll give him that much; not that it takes a whole lot to get Tommy
Not a Cloud in Sight
Flat clouds hung low over the Kansas plains that October morning. After Sam fed the hogs, she wandered into the old farmhouse kitchen, where her parents were arguing about Uncle Ray. Sam’s mother didn’t want Uncle Ray to visit. She said Sam’s father acted different when his
Bones of the Founders It was a dead city, street after street of brick buildings, windows boarded over, the tear tracks from their block letter names eroded to near invisibility. Stritmeyers, J.C. Ward & Co., Good Humor. A hot dog shop boasted a few cars parked outside. These were late model vehicles, well maintained. There
Bite Down
My mouth leaked soap juices which ran down my chin. It felt big, like at the dentist’s when they pull you open to stick things in. Mother flapped the tea towel about, came in close. ‘What kind of language is that for a lady?’ Sweat was on her face. Her curls
Things I Learned but No Longer Believe Shakespeare had red hair Van Gogh never painted a nude
Apollinaire was a pornographer Satie wore corduroy suits
Schiller sniffed moldy apples Edward Lear colored trees
Balzac used a raven’s quill Hamsun survived TB
Sherwood Anderson was a Zionist Zane Grey was a doc
Radiguet owned land in
An emotion, hard to define, stalks Capital Street. After last call but before the puffs of exhaust from Sunday morning paper delivery–at a time when the best thing in your life that ever happened to you changes into the best thing in your life that ever could have happened to you and it melts the
