‘I believed everything they told me…it’s all a lie… You need help, Ronnie… No, you need help – with all your God and your bullshit dreams about me! We sh… shot women and children. You didn’t shoot women and children. What are you saying?…I didn’t force you to go! Yes, you did! Yes, you did!’⁓Born on the Fourth of July… Read more →
Ultimately, I am not to be trusted. I once read too many novels and now I’m very twisty with the truth. Prone to toothaches and broken appliances in every cupboard. Hoarding the ties of bedded strangers and discarded wedding rings. Every good piece of horror needs the villainess. Red lipped and vicious with her plotlines. That single red heel floating… Read more →
I didn’t know what the word meant. So, I looked it up. Had to do with a dirge and I just couldn’t go there, been writing about the dead for so long. Suicides on the news. A celebrity chef dispatched to parts unknown and a pretty handbag lady lost it, used a red scarf. Reminded me of Jim Harrison’s line… Read more →
Here’s another wedding picture—a happy couple on a beach with a pretty mom—everyone smiling and alive. Not like my wedding where the Greek women wore black and my godfather excused them by saying, “Black is au courant.” Ever the bobcat and a fancy tom, Sam was the mysterious man wearing leather pants in my mother’s honeymoon pictures taken in a… Read more →
The Destroyer was not warned about gaining his freshman ten with easy access to bagel Mondays, birthday cakes, and leftover pizza from meetings. The Destroyer decides to raise the mean as his way to self-esteem, and brokers a deal with his local donut shop for a standing order. His popularity is unprecedented and he makes sure to serve up pastries… Read more →
My great-grandfather’s hands fold over his chest light as paper wings all the brownness drained out of them. Folded as we fold dishcloths, as we fold newspapers after they’ve been read, the creases misaligned and quiet. Under the stillness a flurry of fingers stained with shoe polish nails black with oil. Palms caked in cool earth, rabbit fur, cactus spines… Read more →
By four o’clock your apartment is blanketed in warm honey. You lay down for a siesta not because you’re tired, but because she is from red earth, olive groves and orange blossoms because she asks you with her eyes until you give in, because half the city is sleeping because you know what she tells you is true— these are… Read more →