There is a little girl lurking just out the corner of your eye. She hardly ever speaks, and you hardly speak either. She has never done anything to you. She just stands in the distance, looking at you. Looking, looking, looking. When your eyes meet in the smudged mirror, she stares back, faintly sad.… Continue Reading
I think of Renaissance art, of how difficult it is to tell the saved from the damned, the human from the holy. Imagine the miracle of this woman’s corded neck as she bends toward Sally’s ear. Her pinned name tag falls to the floor. I’m searching for the glint of an odd halo. … Continue Reading
At this moment I am choosing to see because I know that even if I choose not to, even if I close my eyes or look away, everything will still be there, and if I miss ugliness then I’ll miss beauty, too.… Continue Reading
Dad had rarely spoken of Salina. Said they’d been poor, and that was that. But once, he told us that his mother, long dead from a drunk driving accident, had been considered the most beautiful woman in Kansas.… Continue Reading
All clean rice requires some violence.… Continue Reading
The mammoth carcass that had washed up from the sea was pearly gray and larger than anything I had ever seen. Not even my school bus would compare. A glimmer of sun glistened over it like the sea’s shedding skin, leaving what remained bound to the beach, wet, bloated, damaged and stranded.… Continue Reading
I’ve got a small .38 snub nose with a slick oak handle and a silver barrel holstered nice and tight underneath my jeans. I’m going to rob Danny Boy.… Continue Reading
Harold leaned back into a floating position, his arms outreached to either side. He stared upward at it all. Sunlight. Birds. Clouds. The arc of the universe moving in a torquish progression from one horizon to the other. It calmed him.… Continue Reading
Look here, they seemed to be saying. The man took my balls. I am the last of my line. I am the conclusion.… Continue Reading
Because Joe’s refraining from guzzling but is nursing his first, icy, Friday night beer but longs for a serious chug… because he understands that his independent third-grader, soon to be in fourth grade, is eager to impress her old dad… Joe has promised to wait and watch from the Falcon until everything is ready for pickup.… Continue Reading