December 2011
13 posts
measure
.
At seventy three, Alice Ward had long ago resigned herself to the inhumanity of man, but still, as she lay on the floor of the bus, unable to stand on her own, she was deeply saddened when no one offered to help. As the sun’s reflections flicked across the ceiling and the bus gathered speed, she was calmed by the sound of the road beneath, and somewhere in the distance: the sound of...
Diapause
. He drifted with a lingering gait; forged by years of self-doubt and the weight of expectation. She, was a collision of panic and grace; pieced together from the twisted remains; over and over again. Together, they stood in windows: watching the first snow as if it was the last; like attic flies in winter, trapped behind two sheets of glass.
Terminal
.
At an airport cafe,
A silver white fork and
A black plastic knife,
Lay, side by side,
On a napkin raft;
Oblivious to each others
Differences;
Survivors of a world
Gone mad;
The Crossing
. He came to a stop. The headlights of his ten year old Toyota Camry lighting up a Jesus fish on the rusting tailgate of an old Ford truck. Below the low moan of an approaching freight train, and the purr of a neon sign, he saw a red fox, grip, and rip apart a garbage bag with its teeth: shaking its head from side to side to get at whatever food there was. The high beam of an SUV reflected in his...
hopscotch
. On tonight’s cold, long walk home: so cold even the streetlights were huddled together in an effort to stay warm - I thought about taking a cab to the apartment we shared; imagining that when I arrived, you would open the door and forgive me for being late, fifteen years after I left.
The Sway
.
Exiled by fear and partly invisible, We are kids and we are old people; Fingerprints clinging to each other, Footprints tumbling down the stairs.
The Detective
. He had been sitting outside the rundown godless block of flats for almost a day, when it began to rain. It was not Mary Oliver’s speaking rain or the drum of Philip Levine’s rain; nor was it the furious rain of Anne Sexton or the thick, mean rain of Charles Bukowski: By the time he decided it was Longfellow’s rain, it was pouring, and as he watched the buildings melt into the windshield, a...
The Night Library
. Richard Ford sits in the window seat, blowing smoke out of the fifth floor window, flicking ash on passers-by; while Raymond Carver has said all he is going to say and fallen asleep on the couch. In the kitchen, half in the bag, Bukowski has been waging war with a pear-shaped Richard Yates and after relighting his cigar on the hot rings of the electric stove, is now puffing demonstrably...
The price of gas
.
He spent the night
Playing oldies on
The jukebox and
Pouring gasoline
On an old flame:
Trying to convince
Her, he had changed.
And, at midnight,
She finally agreed,
He had changed.
But sadly for him,
So had she.
The Minor Key
. He walked in a minor key, past the record store and the amusement arcade; past his own reflection in the window of a cafe: where clouds hung from the ceiling, a shiny teaspoon stirred sugar into tea, the face of a little boy looked up and away and a bus with backwards words, drove through them. In the street, between the back of a parked car and a yellow taxi, a man on his knees prayed...
The Invisible Man
.
I can see right through me today; through this empty chair and the striped walls of this room; through the sidewalk beneath my window and the subway below. I can see right through me today; flying over chalk hills and villages, church spires and smoking chimneys. I can see right through me today; to a five year old boy sitting in the back seat of his father’s taxi. I can see right through me...
The Foreclosure
. In spite of all the mean things she had said, and the terrible things he had done; when it came time to leave, they just sat there; with everything that was left to say, on the tip of their tongues and nowhere else to go.
The Blue Day
. Today was the first day I didn’t think about you. Today, my cat was on fire. Today, I opened the door of an airplane, dove beneath the ice of Joni Mitchell’s river and watched the roof of the world skate by.