A concerned citizen. That was the caption under the picture of me at the town hall. The picture that ran in the paper on Tuesday morning. The paper that William Frick read over morning coffee, pancakes, eggs and a side of sausage at the Good Town Diner out on route… I stopped writing to find…
Category: Writing
Constant Acts of Self-Interpretation
Yesterday, my chest heavy and my head dull from the beer the night before, I moved slowly through the morning. My voice was scratchy and deep from loud-talking over the music. I met two strangers, TJ and Rachel, who are both regulars at the bar. We talked about thingsā¦ the local music scene, the cops…
Summer’s End
There’s a man on the roof of my neighbor’s house. He’s pulling up shingles and nails. To do this, he uses a tool that looks a little like a spade. He slides it under the shingles and pries them up. I can hear the scrape and thud as it slides under and then stops short…
In Search of a Subject
“Where your next chapter begins.” That was the subject line of Lisa’s email from Hawk Ranch. Her email continued: “Picture yourself among a cluster of trees that sway gently in the breeze. Look past the lush, green backdrop to our beautiful pond….” Reading this opening, I’m left questioning the effectiveness of an email marketing campaign…
A Short Appreciation
that’s how it goes when your head and heart
are in different time zones–
you often don’t find out till tomorrow
what you felt today.
Look at Me
Welcome to post number 499 – whatever I write and post after this post will be number 500. 500 posts and I still struggle to write everyday. 500 posts, and I don’t think I’ve gotten all that much better at being succinct or interesting or disciplined in my writing. 500 posts and I still can’t…
This Moment and the Next
He was a judge in Louisiana. For me as a reader, that one line comes loaded with assumptions. Absent additional context, I immediately thought white, older, perhaps a good ol boy, perhaps racist or I assume the story will have racial tensions and hints of southern gentility. I asked my friend Stacy to respond to…
Salvage
Where salvage sits beside prized… I had just re-read Robert Hass’ poem “Cuttings” and vaguely remembered something about it being a collection of lines and poems that didn’t make it into his finished poems – like film on the cutting room floor. Or perhaps it was flowers gathered together to make a bouquet… Or perhaps…
Inscription
I remember the drum line – a vibrant procession that led the guests in to the grand bank turned banquet hall. It was one of those stately Manhattan banks from a forgotten era of grandeur. As we entered, a row of waiters and waitresses greeted us with bellinis and caviar. The floor was marble, the…
Ticking Away…
Throwing stuff away, cleaning the table, deleting spam emails. This is me wanting to sit down and be productive (write) but putting it off. I’d love to say that it’s about trying to make space or clear out… but it feels more like it’s about tackling some easy things instead of the thing staring me…
Under Construction
It’s amazing how quickly the mind jumps from one thought to something only tangentially related to something else tangentially related to that. In the span of a few minutes, I went from thinking about the vast wasteland ruins of the internet to starting a literary journal in 1996 to my long-standing interest in building things…
A Brief Thaw
Last night I started on a short art project called kickstart your art. It’s a series of prompts and short videos intended to get you moving in the direction of creating art every day. My friend Stacy is doing it and suggested I join her. It’s a 10-day program consisting of 10 minutes a day….