I used to know how you looked: strong arms, wrists like a deckhand on trawlers, your nets reaping tons from the sea. Arms that could go ten rounds with anyone in the ring— you still have the belts and trophies.   The back of your neck dark red from the sun. No hat could protect … Continue reading →

Whitewater Canyon Road, crosswinds trapping dirt. She reached from the passenger side to turn the music down. My blues channel. She wanted my attention. Said it was high time   to rid the back seat of empty pizza boxes. You’re going to learn one hell of a hard lesson about vermin if you don’t. Those … Continue reading →

stooping over and over, oftentimes squatting a teenage girl some ways ahead on the gravel lakeside trail, fortunate finder of spilled change but oddly, after each crouch sidling sideways to stoop again into the undergrowth fringing the frisky water pestering the rocks   dozens and dozens of them as my curiosity approached not pieces of … Continue reading →

Leaves in fall: paper skins stretched dry and cracked between bony fingers hollow, life blood drained from their tips. Extremities frozen keeping the heart alive. A beauty shed forgotten and left to rot among seedlings dreaming and waiting to grow.   Fingers tap to the beating of geese wings, searching for somewhere better; a time … Continue reading →

We drove to the crash site that claimed the rest of our garage band and the route contained sudden hills that pressed a slight sickness as we lunged over each peak. We headed to Lusk farms where the growing corn flowed like emerald ribbon. I had been down this road before but noticed many things … Continue reading →

You unlace your boots and toss them recklessly into a corner where they land surprisingly upright, side-by-side, as if you had set them there purposely, neatly, exactly like that.  What’s the odds? you say, shaking your head in wonderment, suspecting if you’d intended such an orderly outcome, the miraculous boots would have collapsed in a … Continue reading →