Bedtime

She slept in the bed while he slept on the couch so he could hear their sick daughter and her three-day-old cough. And in the morning while she moved around the kitchen and the kids watched too-loud TV and coughed a little more, he crept back into the bed, curled up in the body warmth … Read more

Culturally deprived

“Snow!” he shouted tossing clouds of thin, white sand at the beach making snowmen out of sand with their heads lying down and their arms are wet planks and their toes knotted kelp and they never melt until the sun explodes.

Different

I must be someone very different to him than I am to me. Maybe I’m some fast-talking jack-ass some know-it all jerkweed some high-maintenance poindexter. If he saw me in a bar he would hate me in that bar. I hope god doesn’t see me through his eyes.

Plastic cups

You could find us by the smell of cheap wine in open-air plastic cups. See, we’d walked into this sunny summer party unguarded booze them all in college us two in high school. Strolling the lawn with our big red cups held chest-high both hands. We were alert and amazed. Thick-haired and thin-faced. Bobbing along … Read more

Bacon

My son wants bacon made out of coffee for me and bacon made out of orange juice for him. Leave those pigs alone! But keep the bacon coming.

In Florida

In Florida, the land of the dead for me. All those memories of bouncing on airboats through swamps, and wandering around exotic bird parks, and listening to King Crimson on the wide lawn under the wide sky by the reflecting lagoon. And sometimes driving, sometimes walking over to my great aunts, and uncles, apartments for … Read more

I want to build a house

I want to build a house with Richard Brautigan up on the third floor. Looking out a large window at open land hands on the windowsill. Wearing that old hat that old vest those old glasses. He looks good.

Bad-ass astronomer

Do you know how many stars up there — how many of those nighttime naked-eye stars-that-you-can-see are part of our local little galaxy? Not off in the broader universe representing some distant cluster. Just local twinkle. Milky Way shine. Do you know? Do you? Do you? How about all of them? Motherfucker.