The Glimmerine: Chapter 1
Every morning Leah rushed her to eat breakfast, finish dinner, or brush her teeth. At school, her teachers said, “Turn in your paper. Open your book, line up for lunch,” and at the end of the day, everyone scattered from the school steps to duck inside cars where they were whisked away by their parents […]
An Extra Hand
Felix stared at a tree before the next kid invasion. All he had to do was pick up kids from school and bring them back to the community center. Easier than being a home aide and emptying bedpans. Better than delivering pizza to unmarked storefronts. Pick up bus. Pick up kids. He had a Class C driver’s […]
No Orange for Julius
I always told him no one would ride in a black bus. Wouldn’t listen. Threw away his money to redo the fleet. Told him the bus came off like a hearse or some prison transport. Julius blamed the sun. Said he’d tinted the windows amber because people wanted to sleep between transfer points, cities where […]
Here Comes Another One
I’m running down the side of this volcanic mountain and I get my toe stuck on this overhang. In the distance, I see a ghoul waving his arms and screaming obscenities. I’m trying to free my foot, but I have to be careful because if I lose my balance, I could fall off the cliff […]
Golem Speaks Truth to Power
Between earth and sky and the bearded light of filtering stars, I walked away homeless, death trailed close behind like a poor relative, but tonight, something in the smell of the earth got to me, and for the very first time I saw how the moon stared down at this crippled planet reflecting that even though […]
The Eustachian Tube of a Golem
I learned to think with my eyes speak with my hands in the shimmery violet and reddish black of the evening light the sound of Aramaic wending along the Eustachian tube of my middle ear filled with voices of inanimate friends— table, lamp, pictures—all company keepers and what it means to forge a bolt on […]
This Too Crazy World
Before he uplifted buildings from their foundation the golem demanded to know the truth, for he had grown way beyond his britches and forsooth was capable of anything weirdo, which is why I let him in on my dark secret– didn’t need for him to be a surrogate, a cork stopper for my long dead […]
Leona Canyon Open Space Preserve
Down the stairs of my condominium and across Campus Drive to Leona Canyon Open Space Preserve. In April and May, I canter past an expanse of wild radish and California golden poppies, and beyond a pond that is lined in cattails and home to a changing family of mallards whose ducklings hide behind the rushes. […]
Ghosts: Sequel 2
She pointed to the bronze and wooden statuettes. The fact that she didn’t think the ghost was my husband, interested me while at the same time, I was happy he wasn’t messing with her mind. His own mind occupied a world of special relationships, mathematical probabilities especially about chess, an analytical cast inherited from his […]
Start of Something Big
I spent my life married to an assortment of alcoholics, musicians and mental patients who made interesting, but unreliable mates. Clearly, I wasn’t getting younger and like the Fifth Element in the science fiction movie of the same name, I was great at rescuing people but lousy when it came to love. What else could […]