Hummingbirds
Mother of Pearl door, Istanbul Nails cut red sea scallops into her thumb Held back from digging deeper. What was the point? He’d shut his Facebook door Disenfranchised her from sending Text messages Seven years of speaking Every day Slammed shut silence. Read Pablo Neruda’s Lost Poems Listened to hummingbirds Chitter outside on her patio […]
To Get a Dog, or Not
Down the stairs of my condominium and across Campus Drive I walk along Leona Canyon Open Space Preserve. In April and May, I canter past an expanse of wild radish and California golden poppies. Below there’s a culvert and a pond lined in cattails and home to a family of mallards whose ducklings hide behind […]
Hole-in-One Love
Before the city had cut down pecan trees for the mall, before your brother was diagnosed with cancer, before the crazy woman moved into the fishing cabin, brown earth stretched diagonally toward the bayou topped with stubbles of dried grass sticking out like the hairs of a balding man, orange sun shuddering in a harp […]
Benchmarks
Memory Believes Before Knowing Remembers –William Faulkner Walk past wild radish and California golden poppies, beyond a pond lined in cattails and home to mallards, continue down a slope, an easy jog, a stretch of buckeye trees, the spring’s white candelabra, bay live oak and laurel undulate like dancers in a scrim of sunlight, journey […]
Wandering in the Desert
I want to wake up each morning without remembering your voice, how we used to wrap around together in one invisible seam, a velcro from head to toe. I want to wake up each morning knowing I’ll be okay get everything I need to get done without convincing myself for the hundredth time it’s over. […]
Mortal
The way forward is with a broken heart. –Alice Walker (With thanks to Elizabeth Bishop, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Frank Sinatra and W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan) I was the myth you stole from the twenty-second floor of my apartment building overlooking Long Island Sound and the Orchard Beach of my childhood growing umbrellas and empty beer […]
Shoot Me, I’m Online Dating (11)
I rendezvous with my online dates at either one of two places. The first is near Lake Merritt in Oakland, which provides ample time to sniff each other out and offers enough café choices should we wish to postpone our good-byes. If not, we’ve gotten exercise, and for a short while, can pretend to be […]
Shoot Me, I’m Online Dating (10)
I’m not proud about online dating. Why would I want to brag about trying to find loving companionship after searching through profiles and photographs and exchanging emails for much too long? The truth is that eight years ago I thought the kiss of joy had grazed my cheek. On that particular evening, I had sworn off renewing […]
Shoot Me, I’m Online Dating (9)
One evening as I was minding my own email, an online dating site informed me that I had a message. I clicked a link from successfulman56 and read, “Hello beautiful.” Anyone who calls me beautiful gets my immediate attention. He went on, “You are the perfect definition of beauty and I would like to know the secret behind […]
Darkness Simmers Beneath My Surface
I scrubbed each kitchen tile with vinegar, doused stainless steel appliances with cleaner to remove all streaks, lemon-oiled the two halves of the dining room table and pushed them back together, dusted shelves until the micro-fiber cloth changed colors, gathered up garbage from all four corners and placed them at the door to take downstairs. Later, I remembered how I needed […]