Last Dance
It wasn’t Blake’s fault that the stripper music stopped. You go to these establishments for constants, promises kept. We sat beside the glowing stage. Blake had been droning on about thermal imaging and circuits, trying like everyone else to be cautious with me, but kind of mechanically, as he massaged his temples. Thirty years of friendship, around work, around better… Read more →
One Thousand Eyes of A Fly
Every time I look at my face in the mirror, I think that I cannot remember my Uncle Hector’s face. What was his nose like? What color were his eyes? Did he have scars from his fights with crocodiles in the Amazon River? The last time I remember his presence, the sun awoke like a big eye among the clouds…. Read more →
Meeting Edward Kelley
It turned abnormally cold the night Tom Clerkson arrived at the Dee’s Amagansett house with two bottles of Australian Shiraz, a half depleted Heineken twelve-pack, and Edward Kelley in tow, full of apologies for being two hours late: the train had stalled between Southampton and Easthampton. Judging from the cloud of beer fumes following him into the house,… Read more →
Earslips
I didn’t always know what a womb was. When I was young, very young, and learning from Sister Sylvia that the Virgin Mary had a blessed, fruitful one, I imagined a well-stocked pyramid. And being a loving son with a genuine love of the Virgin Mary, I naturally extended this attribute to my own mother, who, I gathered, had died… Read more →
The Mall Is Still Good
The mall is still good at making you want to wear a fanny pack and pay the claw machine until you win a stuffed basketball. The mall is still good at orange chicken and eyebrow waxes, and also entertaining your children with cartoon-themed racecars and space ice cream. The mall is an excellent smooth jazz jukebox, music that makes you… Read more →
Questions for the Nurse
Dedicated to Sarah Beth Morelli I. Would? “Would you consider organizing something?” the director of the Community Center suggested. “Anything,” is actually how she put it. We were student nurses. This was our second week of six weeks of Community Health. “Try to be helpful,” had been, until then, our only instruction. We had assisted teachers. We had played… Read more →
Pavement 13
Norfolk Island Pine, part of you drinks sunlight. Is this why you slouch like a drunk … Read more →
With a Corpse for Company
A man drove most of the way from Phoenix to the Detroit area this week with a corpse for company, authorities say … It’s strange to think someone could drive 26 hours with a dead person sitting next to them. ~ U.S. News, June 4, 2014 A man has responsibilities. A man has a 92-year-old mother buckled into the back… Read more →
On Hearing That You Were Arrested
When my neighbor, Wallington, invited me to get high in his basement, I couldn’t help but wonder: what if he’s a serial killer? What if he uses his knee-high socks to silence his victims while he gropes them in the dark, loading his pistol and laughing like an evil warlock? Wally’s been in my house. We discussed the NBA lockout,… Read more →