Gus Bigman, the Giant
There once lived a giant, not your ordinary run-of-the-mill giant. Spiders and beetles fought each other for a place to room in his greasy hair. He never brushed his teeth. They were greenish-yellow. Some people who lived in the next state over said they could easily pass out if they got downwind of his breath. Clearly, […]
Golem Says Goodbye
Not sure what else to say except it was too much, couldn’t be the tough everyone wanted, no blood coursing through my veins like humans tinkered together by He Who Shall Not Be Named, the same ones who called me into being with magic up the yin-yang. On the other hand, don’t I have arms, legs, two eyes that see vultures gliding above? I bury […]
Coda of Christmas Humbugs
I’ll be answering to myself while I look for him, he who left the premises so long ago, but now when I stand inside the parking lot scanning roofs to pick out my car from the rest of the humbugs, no golem with empty pockets and hangnail face waiting in the passenger seat for me […]
Graveler
All shadows in the world are screams and like stones plopped in water, they form consecutive rings, each one becoming wider than the next until it’s hard to hear anything else. Tell me who wears a crown around here— I’ll show you my Graveler who sees obstacles as a hill of beans. This is one […]
The Right Hand
My heart was in the right place, grown children in the bloodlines of my inner space, a practicum for laboring over my cheese and cracker man whose birth I toasted with a dark beer. Sounds weird, I know, but I was thirsty. For if women can give birth, then cloning life can’t be such a […]
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 […]
Clay Man of Cheese and Crackers
It wasn’t a job for one man let alone a clay man of cheese and crackers. At night after the lights on the block went out, all we could hear was a single newscaster announcing the football scores, the Rams, the Raiders, a torch light still burning until one of us, feeling our wings in the […]
Sweeter
Another golem came around. Oh, yes. There’s more than one. Talked to students, retirees, regular people. And what happened? Mein kinder cuckoo in the head tarred him with names: socialist, communist, devil— the usual thing that happens when golems try to set things right. We humans are so transparent, some without the kishkas to remember how our parents’ parents and those before them […]
The Golem on Feeling Unsettled
Still unsettled from my last call, when Christian babies had been dug from graves and stashed inside Jewish kitchens to prove guilt, now up against energy efficient drones all rubble down the ritual hole beneath my feet warlocks dance and settle to earth everywhere collecting shrouds– Oy vey iz mir! My stomach a hillock impassable to food, a poor golem, a […]
Golem Takes a Hike on Black Friday
Twisted Bay laurel trunks lean down the hillside branches covered in moss scarves quail make a quick exit like a troupe of dancers racing across stage lights to fame, the only flowers are spindles of yellow ivy on a path wet from rain, skeletons of thistles hang in a eucalyptus-scented afternoon, white helmets of mushrooms, […]