I pulled my car into the driveway of a bird blue bungalow. The screen door opened slowly, and a tiny, hunched woman walked out. Simply…
Harry was sitting on a park bench soaking-up some of that free Vitamin D doctors were telling folks to absorb this time of year. The…
Eyes met, glance away, and then meet again. An awkward dance, like junior-high students mingling, yet it still caused Luke’s heart to jump. The eyes…
“What a sunset,” I coughed. I do not know why I remember this, but I recollect my deplorable health. Nulling stress, little sleep, sparse food,…
Our wedding took place on a July evening in Kolkata, a couple of months before Chhoton and I were to depart for Canada. On that…
Pleasant Valley Township, where I spent my childhood, produced tremendous crops of milkweeds, which loved the sandy loam soil. From springtime on, pastures and ditches…
Oh you young whippersnappers, vampires flinging down your words like petticoats, not stones, don’t call your mother a whore and stop blaming my generation for…
Embrace the body. Embrace the overdeveloped, underappreciated goddess that you are. There is no manual for what you have. You have this vessel that men…
Like nearly all the island lads he couldn’t swim a stroke, yet brought his skin back whole from three straight sinkings on the Murmansk Run.…
My boyfriend left me and thought it was a good idea to send me a picture of himself every day. This was over a year…
I do not want ties. The branches of the linden angle down here, do not move but for the wind. The sinking sun is mindless—it…
Outside, at this café, the muddled noise from so much chatter. The color of the sky is a blue circle. At the same time, a…
By the river, a great smudge of dusky bird abruptly separates from the oak— a bald eagle, beating at the breeze. I break into a…
When Hugh next met Sumiko at a club in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo, he was singing Elvis Costello’s “Allison” through a defective karaoke stage…
Soft waves lapped the cream-colored beaches of Waikiki. It was a silent, scented evening Cameron knew could only be found in this part of the world.…
“Night Driving” imagining buffalo herds grazing under the moon’s white haze the grasses dipping to the rifling breeze, or stars behind the drifting clouds after…
“Layer Ink Over Caesura” Caught shooting the sun’s tangent through the smoked filters of his instrument, his gaze bores inside flame. He postcards thoughts across…
Is it wrong to think about God when you’re lying on a bed in a cheap motel room with a heart recessed into the ceiling,…
Forget the bucket lists: We’re talking bunker lists— predictions of The End more regular than a man who takes his Metamucil. True, theories thus far…
I saw a sparkly backpack in front of me and didn’t know where to turn. The canvas was black but consumed by clear gemstones two…
“Tangerine Peace” In my youthful hubris I was apt to think that the self was the epitome of all this substance that I was no…
“Passing Muster” You glowed in Shakespeare’s Measure play with art enough to make me wish you were my wife. And yet you parlayed Isabella’s part,…
When the day’s finished coming apart, I kick what’s empty all the way to bed, or stand and stare through the eyes of a penny…
George wore his favorite suit, his only suit, for the interview. It was brown corduroy. He’d owned it for years, though he hadn’t much call…
There is an old man that comes and sits in his car on the hill top overlooking Lake Alan every Tuesday night. I know this because…
Dogs were without question at the top of the list. But there were other creatures for whom he had little affection as well: Deer, for…
The man…his face was one you could get lost in. His face shared the daily wear of years of gazing…pondering…and being encompassed by the blistering…
It was a gray afternoon with clouds filling the sky. The air was damp and would have been chilly if not for the constant breathe…
I walked to school every day until I was ten years old. In the late summer, when school was just beginning, the air was warm…
Before the drought, at this point of the trail, Andrew could remember the sky becoming nothing more than speckles of blue light that glimmered through…
“Coke in Amazonia” The farms swam quietly past our bus window surrendering to a rainforest of fig and sandpaper trees on an endless tongue of…
I waved a dollar out the window. We brushed hands as he took it. Thank you, he said. I said nothing, just rolled my window…
He insists on confessing “I’ve never gotten poems” and he’s both surprised and pleased when I tell him “Sometimes neither have I.” I assure him…
Still cold enough for gloves. So pushing through the weeping willow curtains meant bamboo hung segmented and winter-colored, chains that swallowed something lumpy – strings…
“Grab your drink. Let’s go for a ride” We walked down to the fishing boat my dad and I, walleye and northern ball-player doctor, runner attorney.…
I keep adding to the weeds next to the window where they block the sun that once dried them and keep my home cool. Soon…
“Often when you think you’re at the end of something, you’re at the beginning of something else.” ― Fred Rogers Whenever I put on my…
Since yesterday tea leaves tremble in the clouds, clues we don’t notice dance closer to the surface, blind to the symptoms of a cyclone A…
i’d like to unzip my life and step out of it cross the street walk into a diner order black coffee drink it and write…
Lockstep, seat to seat jotting pseudonyms. Do we like the same books? Have you ever collapsed in public? The sly comic calling starts and stops…