Any time you step out on the road, you see Brown faces mixing into the brown land. Caballeros sit on their porches and stray Dogs walk around scavenging for food, and no, not Everyone cares about those dogs. For eleven years, I’d go to church to walk around the Gaudy festival right after the priest … Continue reading →

First Jane gets heavy, and decides she likes a teapot with a burner and visits to the gynecologist. All this fooling around in trees was fun when she was young, but it gets old quick, as quick as a person ages, or quicker. She takes off for the big city, promising to be in touch. … Continue reading →

When you grow up, dying Nanny said, you can leave here and join the army and go those places they tell you, buy yourself property in Alabama. It’s cheap living in Alabama, she said. I had a cousin who enlisted and bought a house in Alabama, a real house owned and everything, and never had … Continue reading →

These neighborhood houses are marked with historical plaques, people and dates from the 19th century mostly, ordinary folk whose homes have defied the years. As a kid, the history I delved into was mostly kings and battles, beheadings and cavalry charges. There was nothing about streets and sidewalks, doors and windows, roofs slanted to defy … Continue reading →

The cop discovers her seated in her kitchen chair, head drooped over, hands draped at her sides. Her coffee is half-drunk and curdled. Her last cigarette is nothing but butt and ash. She’s been living in that same old house for years. Never married. No family as far as anyone knows. When the cop peered … Continue reading →

A ferry ride from here to there a sea current spiked with whitecaps we slide parallel with the island so close you’d think you could touch it and I imagine jumping over the rail going ice cold into water like a needle but these dream bodies strike west through sunlit magical pools blazing with desire … Continue reading →

Another penny for the swear jar. Another garden of lit cigarette butts burning some life into a dead lawn. Think: fireflies to night. Think of a round bit of neon so far down the tracks it looks like a train is coming. Try to remember the last time you saw a train & didn’t wait … Continue reading →