Whatever flailed or failed, he tried to fix with rubber bands and wire, nails and splints— clothesline pulley, oven door, typewriter, rake toilet float, furnace door, throttle, drain, and I too have tried to keep the world in...
Read MoreThe Band-Aid over the biopsy scar. The atomic jellyfish floating along on its IV stand. Blood bag. Wheels attached to shackles, jaws wide open. The same red tape that Charles, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, used to bind...
Read Morewatching you leave, I fear the distance you must travel. So I wait while you fiddle with starting the car— all the things you do— shuffle out of your coat, adjust the mirrors. I remain at the door if it is cold like today, 14...
Read MoreThe clouds are generous, always forgiving who they were and who they become, and water likewise, knowing its certain way through the most circuitous crevice to the all-accepting sea, but I am not sure I know how to fill...
Read MoreWhile Willie watched football on a Sunday afternoon, Annette went to the grocery store because they were both on a diet and there was nothing safe to eat in the house, “Life is a diet,” Willie said. “It is if you want to keep...
Read MoreOne summer night decades after I had begun the perilous job of raising my children, I was having dinner by the sea with two beloved friends. We were speaking, not of ourselves as parents, but about our own parents. Both my...
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When Vietnam took all the boys and splayed them on the evening news, a boy, like most boys emulating most men, but especially in uniform, I was smitten with TV shows on World War Two, diluted versions without the gore, without...
Read MoreA note on my wall, pinned there for years, reads Forgiveness and Compassion. The memo’s role varies from reminder to plea to demand. Two vague aspirations, neither seem up to the task; neither word fits my intent; however, at...
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“Will anything Man does ever make sense? we were squatters but in the land of ritual and tradition the king was told rid yourself of ravens and the monarchy turns to dust from then on men in weird orange uniforms fed us...
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