Care….
All the mighty reach my spending.
Strong opinions come with wrists with steel.
Direct the world with threaten words.
Arms as twisters make the cares.

Care a naught for morals.
Bosses acute mania due to powers acted from height.
Bottom got no honor rolls.
ZOIC－madness written all in times as know at once.

Pull the triggers go to blow.
Powers struggles will get desires to all.
Teacher pets will pray.
Leaders’ faults will pay.
Pray and pay as all are plays.

Pray to gods and pay your meals.
Make the silk in play.

The cool air flooded out of the building and sent my long hair sailing back over my shoulders as I walked through the automatic sliding doors. Though it had been four years since I had last walked through the doors of Mercy Hospital, the smell of alcohol, urine, and flowers still stung my nostrils and flooded my senses with loss.

You keep repeating relationships—which means your life is the same now as it was when you were a child. You’re not proud of it, but you know you’ve been having the same conversations with your mate as you had with your father when you were ten. Remember, you were being efficient as only you knew how, while chopping iceberg lettuce and fresh tomatoes in the orange-cupboarded kitchen—when he arrived home from work and began demanding that you inventory what you’d accomplished during the day. You swear it was the same conversation you just had in your alder-cupboarded kitchen, even though then you were wearing a red scort and white peasant top, and now you’re wearing black capris and a white tank. Iceberg even.

1— Yan-choi-yee law case.
Models go instant Zen?
Nature calls no nature high.
Should pick an instant Zen to saw the dome to near as some?
Annals link the guests to take the doses.

Come impure Inca messages are used.
Yan-CHOI-Yee interior decorating is rude?
Law with case is trail to sue.
Defendant collusions lawyers take the coats in blue.

Witness go against are coats in blue.
Cross examine go with truths.
Final accuses were fail.
Come endorse by rich.

Come indorse the back by leg of laws.
Come engaged a case with drugs abused.
No good to speak not the truths.

The following piece was published in The Statesman, Calcutta, India, on January 10, 2000. The subject of this piece passed away on 3 April 2004.

She is lost to me already, without having died, this woman I care for in more ways than one. Bound to her by indissoluble ties, I sometimes pause to wonder, guilt-stricken, whether my commitment to this stranger in all but name and appearance can honestly be described by the euphemism that pervades the literature available on the malady--"a labour of love". For oftener than not, I am unable to regard it as anything other than an exercise in frustration, resentment, anger, futility and resignation.

a short story by Dina Di Maio
(

)

There is a part of Barrow Street where the road not so much forks as curves and joins with another. At this juncture, there is a restaurant, a quaint, bricked place. Inside, there is a glow from candles and dim lights. There is noise of chatter. The restaurant is like that of an inn hidden in a cozy town in Europe. A small theater is a few doors away. Gorgeous homes flaunt impossible remodeled kitchens through open windows. This corner does not feel like New York and that is why I come here when I need to think. My mother once told me that when she was a child, she used to look through the windows of a restaurant on this street when she visited her aunt. I am almost positive it was not this restaurant but I understand the feeling she described to me as I pass this spot now. It is the feeling that reminds me that I am still in New York and I am curled within one of its secret spots.

May 9, 2002--Springfield, MO

On the 157, 643, 241, 708th day Dog created me--and he thought it might have been a waste of his time.

11:49 pm

Dropped CM off at his place about 20 mins ago. Beginning to wonder how many people think I'm homosexual. I tend to have more guy friends I hang out with, and more female friends I consult with, but I am really good in bed…(I am an egotist!)…or does that mean something else.

Sign says: watch for backing cars

I went to punch it on Grand at the Jefferson intersection, and the auto-clutch stalled. Upset. Still loaded on caffeine from the Mud House, no sleep tonight, acute insomnia.