Monthly Archives: November 2014

Conditional Love

I don’t know what response to give you now. I wonder: can I leave your words alone? Impelled to answer, I do not know how to meet your sadness fairly. For the tone of recent messages is poignant, blue, in … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Lost Children (Finish)

Cindy understood. For the first time in her memory she was most important to someone. She felt almost desperate in happiness. Eager. She had heard versions of the sex talk at school, from her mother, out of the mouths of … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Lost Children (Start)

She was born in central California in the middle of the 1950s, in the middle of a family of boys. Her mother was vain and her father was egotistical; they neither noticed each other, really, so it wasn’t too surprising … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Pragmatic

In your early middle years you cherished hopes for your children and disdain for your spouse. But by the time you neared 60, you’d gone beyond disappointed with your kids and you began to view your husband with favor. It’s … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Shelby (A Semi-Acrostic)

As unselfconscious as the autumn light, a clumsy tumble bound of energy with streaming ears and boulder paws aflight atop a springing meadow… Come to me, oh tonic mongrel: be my everfriend. Example me your optimistic view. Remind me more … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment

Sketching

This pen’s a stick of charcoal in my hand. I sweep in strokes across a page of lined buff paper, spiral-bound and pale as sand, or shade with tiny smudges. All I find outside commuting windows or beyond my walking … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry, Writing | Leave a comment

Little Lottary (Part 3 of 3)

“Good grief, she’s huge,” came as expected, before the door even shut. “She must weigh a hundred pounds more than she did when I saw her last.” Sheila’s mother came around the bed and sat in the large depression Gwen … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Little Lottary (Part 2 of 3)

Gwen was late the next evening. Sheila expected to see her restored friend by six, and was hard-wondering by 6:20. She told herself she was sure Gwen would come. She thumbed the button on the patient-administered analgesia machine, giving herself … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Little Lottary (Part 1 of 3)

Word about Sheila’s operation got around fast. Phenomenal medical stories do. “Did you hear about Sheila Ehrman?” one old classmate asked another in the aisles of Safeway. “You remember her: the fat blonde who hung around with Gwen Strybulski? Ginny … Continue reading

Posted in Fiction | Leave a comment

Noticing Palm Trees

I owe the gardener my thanks, for Ken by planting something made me notice what was all around me. Here it is again – the evidence my eyes were in a rut. Remarkable: I must admit the sight of tropic … Continue reading

Posted in Poetry | Leave a comment