You said you felt under the weather. I suggested soup and you replied tomato. Tomato with grilled cheese. While I blanched them, you put on Van Morrison and scrolled through my songs. You considered yourself an expert.   “You need to clean your music library. Doesn’t it annoy you? How do you know what you [...]

The worst thing you can say about her is that she was once your friend. Perceiving that you stood side-by-side, you courted battle fighting the giants, while she secretly cheered for them to win. On the last night you invited her into your home, you welcomed her to sit at your table, to eat, to [...]

Giant Rat There was a giant rat that lived in our basement floor apartment in Boston that year. I lived with two guys that I didn’t know very well—and we were all very different personality types. One guy, Tom, worshipped David Bowie. He was a skinny, angular blond guy—with David Bowie hair and clothes. He [...]

Excerpt from Lily’s Odyssey, a novel, published with permission by All Things That Matter Press; its first chapter a Short List Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award for Best New Writing   At the next session Dirk said, “To end your sense of abandonment you should find companionship. You have one foot in the traditional [...]

You gaze at the clothes flipping in the washer, because you don’t know what else to do. They’re not even yours. You told Brad you needed something more, something he couldn’t offer, something you couldn’t explain. You rubbed your damp palms over the lime green material of your dress and told him you wouldn’t forget. [...]

She scrapes the charred crumbs from her morning toast, then she does laundry. She does ironing, then she strums a chord on her guitar, commiserating with herself, as the taut metal strings slice pain into her tender fingertips. She does more laundry, then she spatter-paints with Pollockesque abandon. Which inevitably generates more dirty clothes. She [...]

Have you ever tried to listen to the footsteps of a cat walking through snow?  He takes gentle steps, as usual, but the top layer of snow – like the crust of crème brulee – betrays him.  I watched the cat walk across the yard this morning, after five inches fell last night.  The yard [...]

Strolling down Bridge Street my eyes wandered to a sign in a window reading, in big bright yellow letters, BOOKS WANTED. I walked in, greeted the man behind the counter with the highest grade of courtesy I could muster, and handed my CV to him with a casual assurance born of weeks of beating the [...]

It’s the usual scene – family, close friends, and distant relatives are packed into a tiny salon. Their black mourning clothes make them indistinguishable from each other. It’s hot. The tension is extreme. It breaks when the body is carried in. Now comes the theatrics, the crying, the weeping, even fainting. Breath, sighs, sweat, and [...]

We drink until we become different people.  Fuck each other stupid to see who gets the most injuries.  There’s a tally chart on our bedroom wall.  There’s a 911 dialed on a cell phone.  There’s a dispatcher somewhere waiting to hear one of us say, “I don’t know how it happened.”  Last night I went [...]

I carve holes in the femur bone of my former enemy. I have sucked the marrow out and cooked his tender flesh for consumption. His organs and muscle I have ground into sausage. I cook the sausage and feed the homeless in Tompkins Square Park. The media heralds me as a generous hearted humanitarian. I [...]

A child finds lost earrings in the sand and puts them in her mouth. A seagull picks the corpse of a small-mouth gruntfish and crystal jellies and egg-yolk jellies lie holding in their inner folds the balance of life and decay. Seaweed pops on the rocks. Dry stubbly grass pokes from broken shells and reeds [...]