Elmo, My Golem
He slinks around in a navy-blue hoodie and sweatpants, black leather gloves pulled over his hands to hide several missing digits, my fault for not shaping five good fingers from the left-over cheese and crackers. Now he looks like Elmo from Sesame Street, only no red fur, and not as cheerful. I’d hoped for him […]
Cubicle Life, the End
I’ve sworn off cubicle life sitting in front of a screen. Many emails mean I have to stay up late studying spreadsheets of a growing predicament, my destiny to telecommute, weekend from home. I’ve sworn off cubicle life in a windowless room tracing a mouse across the horizon of my desktop, menu bars bloom instant messages, the person on the other side of […]
24-Hour Fitness
Ellipticals, treadmills, exercise bikes, pick my way through a forest of equipment gauge how close or far I wish to be from monitors displaying talk shows, cooking programs, sports, news, no intelligence, mute turned on, stake out a machine near the Barefoot Contessa spray disinfectant on a brown paper towel wipe the machine from its […]
The Mustang
I’m on vacation from Chicago and visiting my girlfriend in Louisiana. Joy and I met in college. The plan is to drive to New Orleans the following weekend for the Jazz Festival. She let me borrow her car so I can pick up a few things for our trip. She says to watch out […]
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 […]