Last week, my friend took one of his friends out for dinner. They went to a nice and well-known place in the neighborhood. It’s probably one of the fancier restaurants on the street – they’re said to have a great braised short rib. Almost every night since his dinner, he’s grumbled about paying a lot…
Category: Life
Sometimes, the Creepy Algorithms Kinda Work
The other night, for no reason other than my typical doom-scrolling and being unable to fall asleep, I checked one of my social media accounts – an account I seldom check. I had received a follow from a woman I went on a date with two years ago when I visited San Francisco. We had…
It’s Not Getting Any Easier
Tuesday morning. I read the lines, “It’s not getting any easier, / not with these picture hooks / hammered through the walls of my heart,” (from the poem “My Life” by Dobby Gibson). I pause and reflect. I want to make the lines my own. There’s something about how memory lingers in the mind and…
Complications with Oral Hygiene
I should probably buy a new toothbrush. I tend to use mine until it’s splayed, flattened, and soft. This task, buying a new toothbrush, should be as easy as picking it up at the grocery store on one of my weekly or more than weekly trips. Except… I’m pretty sure everything in the aisle with…
Thanks Void, Sorry for Screaming
Politically and emotionally, it’s been a dark week / week-and-a-half. I suspect that’s the point of the new administration: create in groups and out groups and demoralize, terrorize, and exhaust the out groups. Part of their strategy to ram through their agenda, regardless of how unpopular it may be, is to cause so much disruption…
A Man Walks Into a Bar
Not long ago I found myself in one of those conversations where I just didn’t like the other person. Not only did I struggle to find common ground with him, but I had trouble finding any redeeming qualities in him. Our conversation started out innocently enough. We’ve seen each other at the bar a few…
January Twenty-First
On an otherwise empty bookshelf in my sparsely decorated apartment in Memphis, Tennessee, I used to have displayed (perhaps arranged is a better word) two or three rocks and a small piece of driftwood. I don’t remember the significance of two of the rocks. I think they were picked up on a beach in San…
This Is Fine
This morning I felt my first earthquake. 3.7 magnitude, not more than a few miles away. I was still in bed. Despite going to bed early, and drinking fluids, and all of those things, the remnants of having the flu are still kicking my ass. Coughing through the night meant I wasn’t sleeping. Not sleeping…
Reason Number 27 on Why I’m Not a Better Writer
Among the things that hold me back as a writer/poet (besides talent, practice, and perseverance) is this pesky adherence to or proximity to the truth. I suppose it’s a little more complicated than that… but in a nutshell, when I write a poem, the you or the he or the she tends to be based…
A Beadrel in the Barn
“Beadrel with a barn.” That’s what the note on my phone from 3:06am says. It’s possible it was supposed to say, “Beadrel in a barn.” This is what my wife shouted as she walked up the stairs to find that I was taking a shower but had left the bathroom door open. “There’s a Beadrel…
Duck Season, Wabbit Season, Flu Season
She was a redhead. Most of them are. She was flirting with me and a guy who looked like Ronald Weasley from Harry Potter (also a redhead). He seemed to have the upper hand in gaining her favor. She said I’d have to show her that I was serious about us if we were ever…
Hell in a Handbasket
In addition to feeling sick (yesterday morning’s sleepiness may have been the onset of something), I’m experiencing that mild sense of trepidation that I feel when I think about world events – trepidation and powerlessness. I don’t know how to move forward in a post-truth world. Yesterday was January 6. It should be a day…