Why not now go toward the things I love. – Natalie Diaz Ribbons of reds and greens from a garden, friends nibbling on spices and hummus fixed on a plate, sharing insights into the heart. Your son, holding up his...
Read MoreRobins weaving through our yellow lilies. Cardinals, red as poppies, pirouetting above our bird bath. My dad calls them messengers, for those we lost, offering me a glint of comfort. I think of a young mother in our town...
Read MoreLetta found herself Thursday night doing the dishes. She was leaning against the sink scrubbing a skillet and just looked up. There she was, reflected in the uncurtained window over the sink, staring at herself over the jumble...
Read MoreDevlin Cortez’s reputation may have aided him during the scandal over the music score for his new film, Dark As Night, had Brett Dumois, its composer, not taken his life less than a week after the film’s successful Sundance...
Read More1 Our wolfish dog, his howling wilderness traded in for the caveman’s whiff of cooked meat, his ancestry buried beyond the muzzling fence. He’s gotten lost out there, unleashed, unfed, a missing person, collared and labeled: “If...
Read MoreIt was May seventh, 1945, and on the top floor of the tallest building, two Nazi soldiers hid in an office overlooking the square. As the German army fled, the soldiers waited to finish their final mission: kill as many as...
Read MoreDuring Patsy’s last days, I stood beside the bed of my wife. Occasionally, she frowned or tried to touch her nose. I guided her hand, enabling her to scratch her itch. Other times, her breathing was labored, or she choked on her...
Read MoreIn the woods wild raspberries are whispering in their sleep— and below the berry’s thorny vines, field mice curl in their nests— and leaves turn from the crinkled brown color of old lunch bags into dusky shadows— and beneath the...
Read MoreWhen I was in my twenties and he in his fifties, I parked across from the country cemetery my father passed on his jogging days. I waited in my car for the photograph I (loving daughter) would turn into an oil painting— our...
Read MoreThe master starts with a painterly cliché (Loutherbourg, Thomson, Reynolds): idealized girls in ideal landscapes crossing a body of water. But his illegitimate daughters Evelina and Georgiana surprised his heart, disturbed the...
Read MoreBURIAL AT SEA, 1992 BY ROBERT BEGIEBING We gather mother, sisters, brother on the wild rocks of Monterey Peninsula just south of Spanish Bay and Point Joe that ageless graveyard of ships where two currents collide into...
Read Moreas if by magic the durian orchard relieves – in anticipatory deliciousness – an ash grey sky & the morning’s striated silver meeting dawn makes for a promising celestial cascade & no quota rules this...
Read More
