Goat
Starched white suit, he wears an olive oil can crown on his head, carries challah as a scepter, a scepter mixes seeds blown from a thistle rubbed on the honey sac of a bee that leans toward Jerusalem, Jerusalem where pebbles rotate in a circle, strained rusted keys buried in a mound, a mound of […]
We Watched a Mystery on TV in Your Hospital Room
Books UPS taped and labeled, my proxy before I landed in Shreveport where a shunned bullet path stuttered like a roman candle, and a bag of chips fell from a vending machine waiting to be rescued. The footage shows your blood on asphalt, a handprint on the driver’s side above the window. They’ve found a […]
North Lake Merritt Bench Crone
She sits on a bench wearing a carved tree resin rose black garbage bag filled with acorns, eucalyptus leaves, her bandages of flesh. Whatever she finds she stuffs into her hotch-potch pot, plastic water bottles discarded after a three-mile run, flyers from a flea market. She conducts a crowd of seagulls away from her lack […]
The Land of Silence
This is a story about Randy and June, who lived in the Land of Silence. Every day they walked five miles outside the city to pick walnuts from the walnut trees, which is how they got enough to eat. But in order to have a cot to sleep on and a well to wash their […]
Why the Telephone Pole is not a Shrimp
There was a telephone pole two inches tall. One night in New York City on January 3, 1948 at three o’clock in the morning, the pole said, “I wish I were two fee higher.” The pole did not know it, but just as he spoke, there was a falling star. About one hour later, a […]
The Story of the Hydrant
Before there were cities, the hydrant lived beneath the ocean. That’s where she got all her water. When the fish were thirsty, they swam up to the hydrant’s nozzle and sipped. Then they went to sleep inside their coral beds. But there was an evil sea-dragon named Shemi Parami who lived at the bottom of […]
WFH
“Sitting in front of the computer, my brain and hands connect in a singular, focused way across the keyboard.” I’ve worked from home for most of my adult life, more like worked at home after I finished working at a desk, rushing back to get dinner ready. The kids are gone, I’ve moved along in […]
The Fool
I can find my car in the parking lot by the way the back window is spotted from my past. To pass time I read the fine print of oysters and watch out for pyramid schemes. Once I got lost trying to acquire kitty litter in WalMart. It took two days and night vision to get out […]