(cont.) 156. It’s an all-natural people repellant. Not only am I a six-foot-six gorilla wearing size sixteen shoes, but also my mohawk is longer than just about anybody’s hair. So, even at my day job where I’ve worked with the public for over a decade, people have become this much more reluctant to approach me. For a time, I… Read more →
“The chickens are always in twos,” my 16-year-old says, watching our laying hens grub with clawed toes, then peer at the ground, tilting their heads for a close look, just outside our kitchen window. (I think) my daughter is distracting herself from the homework on the counter in front of her. School is often miserable for both of us, a… Read more →
Seth watches me shiver and hug myself, sliding my fingers over shoulders and forearms. “It was real right?” I ask. “Yes” he answers. I’m wearing a hospital gown, hair up in a horrible bun, pale-skinned, suicidal—or so I said. The nurse checks my pulse for the second time. A breakfast tray sits on a stainless-steel surface near my bed surrounded… Read more →
The other problem with killswitching is the craving of what was suddenly killed. Because nothing died. The light wasn’t allowed to dim, it was frantically snuffed. Which means sparks were still visible, even if we couldn’t see them. Burning. Illuminating pockets and crevices of life. In utero. A life that would be best forever wombed. Because, what if it couldn’t… Read more →
Blur: figment of my imagination, a ghost of her, the imprint in my mind. Her face there, vivid, the second the scalding water hit my shoulders. Her face then, thirty-some years ago, since that’s how I see her even now—young but vaguely angry, her lips a halo of wrinkles, like the jagged rays I drew around yellow circles to show… Read more →
My freshman homecoming date rumbles away in his dad’s Ford pickup with his older brother—dressed in a clown suit—at the wheel. I huff the sweet exhaust and watch their red taillights burn out of sight. I take it slow up the front steps to the house, wondering how I’ll make it past Mom without her seeing that my dress is… Read more →
Teaching can be a thankless job. I have done it for thirty years and sometimes it feels like it’s getting more thankless all the time. I teach freshman comp at a local college. Last semester was one of the worst. A student who wrote one paper out of five and missed the last month and a half of class claimed… Read more →
My damp legs make a gross thwapping noise every time I peel one from the chair, but the ripped vinyl itches too much for me to keep still. The windowless American Legion kitchen where Mom works nights as a short-order cook is blazing hot. “Indian Summer” my teacher called it. Mom is in a mood on account of the thick… Read more →
These are the facts we know: George died in 1883, a successful man. Three years later, my great-great-grandfather Joseph, who had followed his brother from Ohio to Kansas to Denver, abandoned his wife and children and lit out for California. It was where George had gone at the end, seeking treatment for a kidney infection no one in the 19th… Read more →
After your ex became your stalker, you moved from Northern California to a 2-bedroom apartment eighty miles southeast of Los Angeles where you looked out the front window while drinking coffee and watched one of the meth addicts who slept in the nearby river bank walk along the street commuters travelled to get to the freeway. Seeking safety and a… Read more →