The Years Dad Blamed the Breeze

Some nights I imagine Dad as the lift in a shoe or wing of a... more

I murdered the cat on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning I was back to work, saying nothing to anyone, scanning milk cartons and zucchinis and rolls of toilet paper.

When I was about five, I prayed to God as I lay in bed. I prayed for the speed of a cheetah, just like the character I had seen in a cartoon on TV. He could run away from anything.

“and where’s the melody
to remedy the melody, the remedy to remedy the remedy” 
      -Diane... more

Something bad happened. I sat on the bed. Tammy was under the bed but I didn’t know that. And the mattress is held up by wooden slats but the slats weren’t cut long enough, so they barely hold up the mattress and if you shift your position on the bed, there is a good chance that the slats will move out of place in the frame and the mattress will fall through the frame. And that’s what happened. The bad thing.

When she died, she just wasn’t there. I had to ask about her. She wasn’t in the usual place.

You find yourself crying on the phone to your manager, telling them you don’t know if you’re in an emotionally abusive relationship or not. That probably deserves certainty.

I think they mean they just don't like a woman going around going "cunt cunt cunt."

Across the vacant middle seat an old man is sleeping through all of this, chin to collarbone, neck bent at a right angle.

Macy’s Closeout... more

I forget how many jobs I got let go from and how many houses picked me up, sheets and everything, and dumped me around the corner until some other work, some other roof overhead, seemed to gather me up and dropped me hence. 

And any of the people that had been counted correctly, including me, could move or die, making the incorrect count accurate once again, if only for a moment.

CYCLE

i sit
drip blood
think i am
such a giver
(whether
i want to be
or not)
where’s your... more

I am in a storehouse of answers, am I not? I head for the reference desk even though there's no one behind the counter.

No one comes. I walk up to the bike. The seat’s taller than my bike.

Upward Mobility

First, we push the children into their games and giggles, to insulate them from... more

It was revolution by music. The world would never be the same.

I don’t smoke, I called out, but no one heard me, and I sounded uncertain. 

seeds

when nothing smells like you
i let dawn-colored fruit rot in the blue bowl
spray perfume... more

I just remember the room dense with familiar sound, the melancholy howl of the perfectly in-tune saxophones, the electric brilliance of trumpets, a drummer with eight arms; my mother looking over at me, expectantly, as if to say, “This is what you wanted, right? This is making you happy?”

What will be will be. She was a good swimmer, and at least he was getting some exercise. 

in the bella resource center

that lesser bond girl
her name was a play on genuflect

i can be... more

Manic yet aware, a foot-stomping Nashville show, a sight to behold. They hit the road. They barely made it. They broke up. Such is life.

Larger currency-pills plink in an “I Hate Mondays” coffee cup. No one knows who that cup belongs to.

I leave behind a lot of empty wine bottles.
You said eat anything in the fridge and I did
right down to the last gherkin.
Unrelated: your... more

...a person is like an ocean, or a country, or a forest...