Long Bang
Five sweaters and a hat find me in the kitchen. Predictably, mother left cigarettes and no note, so I have one over orange juice.
And I make myself concerned suddenly with just where those same mothers have gone absent to, with the indoor weather something now intolerable.
Fate's Power Animal
Ensconced meanwhile on all sides up the walls amassed a seismic epic fuckton of cultural memorabilia. Oversized indigenous masks carved from rare redwoods slung up beside deactivated German lugers and grenades of every issue. Microphones, pygmy skulls, framed tattooed pig skins, and shells of bass guitars that looked burnt. Lemmy is the high prince of a really metal tiki bar.
The Throwing Muse
Here’s what’s wrong with Eric and Marie: Eric is a twenty-eight-year-old writer. He’s alright at it and lives off of it when it pays well, which is most of the time, and he’s made a comfortable space for he and Marie in their marriage in the world. But as of the past two months, and for no particular reason, Eric has the unfortunate luck to be experiencing what writers sometimes call a "block," which some claim does not really exist and others claim can be all but deadly. This is Eric’s problem.
Peach Pie — Of Memory, Family, and Home
To mine this impulse buried into everything deep. From the urge to take selfies to the number of children one believes it necessary to have in order to establish a family. Knitted into consumption, desire and expression is this essence which expands and contracts like a lung whose air is self-esteem and self-worth.
Lotusland
"Saw a car accident there in meditation today." She pointed at an indeterminate northeast locale below. Nodding up at me in the pause as if I didn't believe her. "That's right, over coffee. I always stand right where you're standing for about fifteen minutes each morning while I break off a piece of the hottest joe I can possibly do, watching an interminably slow rush hour. The frustration is… transporting.“
Weeping in the Dentist's Chair — Four Poems Featuring Teeth
In either case you’re pretty lucky. Your ache is not as bad as the ache-ache-bleed-bleed of some others who need constant medicine and other means to help ease and regulate the symptoms.
Poetry Test & Fluxus Jokes
Congratulations. This letter is your official notice that you have received an adequate amount of credits to graduate, having earned a degree in POETRY, from the Dana M. Jerman School for Obnoxionist Arts.
Sticky Valentine - An Erotic Fiction
Side one ended as the bed started to squeak. We stopped and snickered and shifted and slowed down. We were both super close even before we got started, but when we came we shuddered breathlessly next to each other like open barn doors in a heavy storm.
The Future Pool Queen and The Sweepstakes Cult - Vegas Notes
This meant I wouldn’t have to muster the push to go scything thru the crop of Nevada’s finest to get what I thought I might want. My new neighbors: some dirty, a few crusty, a number sunscorched right down into ugly, some tubby. Surprisingly even a few of the bitchy ones know how to smile back if you do it first. We’re all human, that’s certain.
Dial A for Anxiety — When a Stranger Asks to Use Your Phone
A girl in the park on a beautiful day once thought it was weird that I’d asked her to sit down beside me on my big comfy beach towel to use my phone. Tough tits honey, my phone, my rules. And I’m not getting off my ass right this second so it’s better for everyone if you get on yours.
Hey, Girl, Hey, It's the Month of May — Three Poems
Buying luck with soft licks of cash
Exhilaration alone empties your stash.
Planes cruise overhead, the planet turns
Palm tress sway, but no one learns
It’s all about love in these years.
So, how about love in these years?
Dinners With Dead Gangsters — A Class War Notebook
Meanwhile in another house that capitalism built, the low-ceilinged “49er Bar” at the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico, local native dark-eyed women from the reservation gossip over sips of massive drinks at tables next to back-lit stained glass. The juke spins saccharine country in a loamy whisper while a stage, tidy and too well-lit for the rest of the place, bears a sign indicating that karaoke was just last evening. Absolutely nothing to do here but drink and be.
A Little Trouble in Big Paradise
The official title must resemble something like “Concessions and Party Hostess.” Birthday parties on Mondays and shifts between 4.5 and 8 hours on a couple other days. Part-part time. Non-negotiable. If you’re already rolling your eyes at this nearly forty year old woman over here thinking for a minute that this was a good idea, you’re absolutely right. I guess I’ll shrug again and say “Hey, I’ll try just about anything once.”
The Green Snowflake: A Christmastime Story
We all lean in and blow on the cake candles. Hollering and hugging. Laughing and clapping at once. It’s the sort of moment you know you can’t keep, just like you can’t freeze time, so instead you just look right into everyone’s smile and wish on the future for more moments just like it.
Tomorrow Will Be Late
She kept running. Wind whipped at our hair and the frenzy in the silhouette was beautiful. I had never been out this far before. Hard to believe home was tucked into one of those cobalt corners of stylized steel that loomed like a frozen storm at the horizon. And so too when I turned again there another storm right in front of me.
Love Curse — Part I
She remembered it was a full moon right before she got in. As soon as they pulled out of the uptown apartment parking lot, all packed in and heading out to a dark graveyard in rural nowhere, she wanted out of the car. But she couldn’t say so. She was hanging out. This is what you did when you hung out and had idyll time. Suddenly, she wanted to be alone. She was hating herself for not turning around and walking back down the hill toward home. Her eyes grew big and dark. Her mouth pulled in with silence.
Rib Of Twilight
He wanted to know if I had anything that belonged to her, or what kind of things did she leave behind? And that gave me pause, because I’d never thought of her, or her case, that way before.
Then the question for me got caught between that place where you consider what you might leave behind and what is left to you, which is kind of all the same thing. Like a big merry-go-round of belongings all changing hands from life to life.
First Season At The Unicorn Ranch
The pails of lemongrass milk we yoke out to slake them will be the same to pick up their poo: pink for girls, blue for boys. Noisome as a teenage pageant winner’s bedroom, it reeks of very horny flowers with a pollen fetish. If left uncollected the deep pheromones attract an unsavory population... I'm not talking about the diamond lice that we inspected their horns for each day...
PETER AND I — Or How Recovery Met Transformation
Steamy mid-afternoon arrived. Soaked in sweat, we took a smoke break on the roof and observed our handiwork. That's when Pete decided the house needed skylights and we took part of the roof off and threw it too into the pit.
Blame The Bookworm -- On Reading and Self-Sabotage
This too is important: skip ahead a little, or just read the ending and find a way to live with yourself about it, but for godsakes. Give yourself permission to quit a book. If after 40 or 50 pages you are slogging thru, put it down. Do it for yourself but also because it needs to be done.
You’re not helping anyone—you’re just bleeding empathy in every direction like a sprinkler system built in hell.