There was no oasis. No needles. Only mirages. Like the imaginary tar pit that turned his bebop jaunt into a slog. And the swarm of bees that punctured him with empty stingers. Even the music came to life in the form of a fanged-beak, blood-red buzzard that circled overhead.… Continue Reading
The garage still smelled like her. Motor oil and lavender detergent. She used to change the oil in both trucks. Said she liked the quiet under the chassis. Said it made her feel like a mechanic and not just someone’s wife.… Continue Reading
As her non-existent father figure, Gwyneth shall mourn him for what could have been rather than what was.… Continue Reading
My wife says I need to give a shit. I say I never understood that expression. Who would want to be given shit? She agrees that it’s a peculiar expression, but that’s beside the point.… Continue Reading
Sometimes it’s too much, just too much. Really, God, if you’re up there, I just don’t know what’s wrong with you, sometimes. Can’t you give a Jew a break?… Continue Reading
Instead of sitting in my mother’s living room, thirty-one, drunk, and jobless, I would be twenty-one, sober, and doing something responsible and worthwhile and American, like fighting in a war somewhere, and everything would look like a 1940s comic book… Continue Reading
Your body is a dead and rusty brass section. French-horn shoulders and cornet forearms, tuba torso, your head a trumpet that cannot sing of how you’ve come to be this funky metal. When you speak, it’s all screeching off-pitch.… Continue Reading
Honestly, I thought I meant more to Neil. For every orgasm, from his shady teenage fumblings in sullied sheets to the creation of both his sons, I was there. Always reliable. Plugging away. Doing my prostate thing.… Continue Reading
We die, he says. Utters that last syllable bombastically—spits it out with firework freshness, so much so that I swear I can see the concept of death colliding with his premature psyche, making its meteoric crater in the smooth terrain of his young and innocent mind.… Continue Reading
What forty-three-year-old husband with a teen who just passed her written driver’s test and has only liberal arts colleges on her list to visit should be thinking about changing careers? And who is he to think any of this rumination will get him anywhere?… Continue Reading