My wife and I were listening to the radio through snowstorm static. Record snowfalls in England, icebergs floating like ghost ships down the Thames. Whole villages disappear beneath the waves. Wheelbarrows and Pontiacs, patio furniture and factories — going, going, gone. Neighbours lean over their garden fences, clutching their thick wool coats tight against their… Read more »
In my Father’s house there are many mansions. ~ John 14:2 In my Great Mother’s, there are Gothic cathedrals and shotgun shacks. There are inner city slums and cottages where retired professors putter around in gardens filled with marigold and antique roses. There are shooting galleries and libraries, observatories and slaughterhouses. There are abandoned factories… Read more »
It was one of those great wasted nights. There we were, gathered over a bottle of Lagavulin–a writer and six actors, irresponsible ne’er-do-wells each and every one. There we were, adrift on a sea of drunken babble, with a deadline looming down on us like the hull of a Russian freighter plowing the fog. What… Read more »
It’s four o’clock in the morning, and your half-awake/half-asleep brain is doing graceful dolphin leaps into uncharted waters. There are crazy unthought-of worlds unfolding all around you. There are mermaids singing somewhere beneath the eiderdown and luminous fish fin their way through the early morning aquarium light. Unable to remain beneath the surface of your… Read more »
Classmate #1: Sure, I knew her. We all did. She was a real weirdo, always crying about something. I don’t think she ever had a bath. The smell was so bad, on field trips we had to keep the windows of the bus rolled down. Nobody ever wanted to sit next to her. If there… Read more »
When she was very young, they tied up her tongue and spun her around in circles. They waged a silent war against her consciousness, day and night without rest. They told her all the wrong names for things. They told her the wrong name for herself. They tried to make her guess whether it was… Read more »
Measure the beauty of that girl, the one who’s running barefoot through the still-wet grass. Factor in all the children like her, all the children dragging kites through the sky or peering into goldfish bowls. All the children sitting in treehouses, or in classrooms with their hands raised, the answers on the tips of their… Read more »
Please come in and make yourself at home. I’m so sorry that I missed your arrival. There’s beer in the fridge, and some good cheese and bread in the pantry. There’s wood stacked up in the fireplace, and some matches on the mantle. Please excuse the dust and the cobwebs, but there just doesn’t seem… Read more »
We are the pumpkin eaters and flashlight swallowers. We are the mandolin players and the knife throwers. We are the bakers of cherry pies and the writers of madrigals dedicated to Denny’s waitresses. We are the Imperial poets of the overlooked and uninvited. If there were any real justice in the world, we would surely… Read more »
If we weren’t so exhausted from working all day long, we would go for a walk after dinner and talk to each other, or maybe take turns reading a good book to each other, the way we used to. Instead of falling asleep watching America’s Next Top Model, we would go out dancing, or ride… Read more »