Once a year, around the holidays, it becomes too much. I crawl in my tweet, cradle my miniature man like my mom used to me. I miss you, I’ll say.… more
Once a year, around the holidays, it becomes too much. I crawl in my tweet, cradle my miniature man like my mom used to me. I miss you, I’ll say.… more
This was nothing like how I knew the ditch water reason for Lobo’s summer sores, how every summer he got the sores and every summer the ditches filled with water. I knew about that now.… more
I ruled the underworld for too long. I am bored, & wish to come home, retire. There is little for me to do; it’s hell on earth & I had nothing to do with it. I blame God (He was never a good boss) for failing humanity. Yes, I know the rules: I forgive him. Can I please come home?… more
Elvis is singing to me. Straight into my soul. He knows all about Sharon, how shit school is, how tough it is being a weirdo, with a brain exploding with new ideas, like burying pennies in the vegetable garden and digging them up a year later when they’re worth thousands of pounds as treasure. Elvis knows, and I know, that our friendship is our destiny.… more
I wondered if I was like him. Even if I loved my children and my wife, it didn’t matter, because I had already abandoned my first family in my own way. Just like him. I studied the picture of Dad again. I just wanted him to turn toward the camera and look my way one time.… more
The other day my wife bought a painting at a thrift store. It’s a fish. It’s a fish underwater. It’s really a good painting. It’s nice. It’s a goldfish. It’s the idea of a goldfish, it’s blurry like you were underwater with the fish. It’s hard to make it out, but the second you look at it, you know it’s a goldfish, and it looks straight out at you.… more
When the satellite was young, it thought only of the way bluegreen oceans slid against sandy brown shores and of how river arteries sliced through dense forest sheen like a lizard darting in haphazard lines though, of course, the satellite had never seen a lizard but it had seen life.… more
“Like death, the violence was just where the thing ended,” Grandma said. “Your grandpa loved the training, the starving, the heat, the cold, the purpose. I know his least favorite part was the violence.”… more
My daughter Jenny is glaring now, so I tell her that chocolate ice cream is full of E-numbers. I tell her that E-numbers are nasty chemicals. I tell her the E stands for European. Then I go on a mini tirade about the bloody Europeans who’ve foisted us with rules for everything from the correct number of toothbrush bristles to the acceptable curvature of bananas.… more
“Pain, we know,” he tells me, “has a much more complex grammar than pleasure.” He holds up the book. I guess it is a quote.… more