for my brother, Paul The aroma of my fresh bag of coffee takes me to a café in Rome, where rain sends me inside to sit and sip and slip into memories. A Midwestern girl wanted to learn how to ask for tea in the rain. “Une tasse...
Read MoreThe sundial set in the pavement of the new plaza is ornament—it has no post. Moderns distrust circles, though we live on one sphere, depend on another for light. Wheels are accepted when restrained to move us in one direction,...
Read MoreIn the pause before the fourth quarter the band plays inconsequential tunes. There was youth, there’s love and then there’s after. When the lover dies the story ends? Unless you’re Romeo with Juliet, Isolde with Tristan, someone...
Read MoreLandscape: favored subject for some painters, object of displaced desire as if it could replace clipped cords of home with the wishful thinking of grand vistas, complementary colors. Real places resist such two- dimensional...
Read MoreThe dark brown liquid beckoned his dry, parched throat. He reached for the half-filled whiskey bottle. His eyes burned. His head pounded. Just one more. As if the bottle could hear his never- ending request. Edward Bailey...
Read MoreJoe Nichols opened Nichelson’s Diner in the mid-1950s after leaving California. No one knew why he used the name Nichelson instead of Nichols or something else; not even his wife Beverly. When she asked one day, a day in the...
Read MoreYour love has faded like the desert sun as it sets slowly in the cold and shivering night. I come to you walking quietly as if you are a faint mirage in the hot and feverish...
Read MoreWhenever I approached The hawk was aloof Rude or reclusive Insisting upon a vast Distance between us This new acquaintance Kestrel or peregrine From its markings Its belly as white As the trillium below I’d like to imagine As an...
Read MoreWe had rules An elaborate though Predicable protocol An understanding at least Historians will eventually Chronicle a treaty Just yesterday All was in order Lush warm fragrant Trillium blanketed Creek banks in drifts White...
Read MoreMy mind Seeks out suffering Excavator of misery My mind Like yours was assembled For this purpose To fabricate and espouse Something new and improved A conundrum to solve Something anything To worry over I was informed Under the...
Read MoreYou dodge the plate. She pitches another. You duck again. “Stop it!” you shout. “I’m sorry!” “I hate you,” she yells. “How could you?” She resumes pelting you with the china. Plate by plate, her force intensifying with each...
Read MoreYes, this is a moment of silence. Shhhhhh! Hush. Listen. The winds whistle their hymns in the distance. The waves wash themselves, away, to a temporary sleep. Of course I would do the same if it wasn’t so quiet....
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