Article

The Shootout

is guns given druthers of meaning or being. the old town look empty but for chattering lace blanching panes awaiting blood for eyes. saltpeter, all. even the buzzards dizzying down washpan dusks. buzzards: God’s hungry fingers. one gun chooses meaning—“this is for”—and sputters. this, for the gun that wins. the other? there’s God’s finger, carnal,…

The Lake

The smell of scattered mothballs as the cottage doors rattled open year after faithful year. There was the sweet rot of paperbacks stretching their spines. Here, men and boys didn’t wear socks with their trousers, and the women talked in whispers scrutinizing newcomers over gin and tonics, straightening their stiff cotton skirts with a propriety…

Difficult Listening Time

A flock of pink flamingos moved in across the street, and set up plastic people on the lawn.                     They’ve faced them out this way, hands molded to their chins, looking more like us as night comes on. Downtown, the waitresses are starving in their aprons; the watchmen get fainter by the hour.                    It’s…

The Pool, 1988

Altadena-summer mustard smog sun all yellow as I have become      this year I fear I am fat and wear a t-shirt when swimming    childish    the T-shirt clinging to me through summer the gut of August    summers before when I was born smack for air    this year the smack of water as I…

Perpetua in Glory

At first, it is a tiny flap of skin no bigger than a fingernail, like a mole or a birthmark but with more substance. I find it when I’m in the bath, the water cooling around me and my father’s razor floating across the surface, reminding me of his presence below the window in the…

Ontology & Guinness

     Darling, my daddy’s razor strap is in my hands, & there’s a soapy cloud on my face. I’m a man of my word. Didn’t I say, If Obama’s elected, I’ll shave off this damn beard that goes back to ’68, to Chicago? I know, I also said I’d kiss the devil, but first let…

Wonder Bread

Cootie Munster’s sister is scared of spiders, Jack says, and then Charlie says we should put some down her pants.“We could get those big ones,” he says, “like that came out of the jungle in the movie yesterday.” Kansas City is hot in July and we are sitting in our clubhouse—The Roscoe Turner Flying Corps—which…