Our grandparents always found us. For years, my wife and I packed up our possessions and moved to another city. Then they would find us again. They never called asking where we were, and we never called them. Our grandparents were cordial in the beginning, said they just needed proximity. They’d move into the neighborhood or the next sub-division over.
We’d let our guard down, and they would pounce. The arrived always at dinner time, crock pots in hand and wine for the grownups. There was an incident in Madison involving the destruction of our front door and tire marks on the carpet. They were cycle heads, Gram and Gramp, and when they moved they moved light. My wife offered them Brian, our oldest, after they found us somewhere near the place EST became CST.…
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Last year I woke up and didn’t see my brother.
He slept across the room from me, but that morning he wasn’t there. No one knew where he’d gone. Not Mama. Not Papa. Not even the maid who picked up my toys when I wasn’t looking. A lot of people came and looked for him. They looked around the house. They looked in the woods outside. I could see them through the window. They even tried to look in the attic, but there were nails in the door. After a while, we couldn’t find him and gave up.
I didn’t miss him.
He’d been older than me and only talked about girls. He wasn’t any fun.
Besides, now there was no one to split dessert with.…
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Out of the blue
your gray matter
is tickled pink
with flying colors
you achieve peace
so you’re cool
as a cucumber
your thoughts
flat as a pancake
because you see
the whole enchilada
the world is slow
as molasses
like a brush stroke
over canvass
that completes a
portrait of bliss
resembling some
psychic reading or
astral projection
the third eye
channeling
the premiere of
epic stillness
written and directed
beyond time
starring what is
until you cast
the first stone
one by one
you put
two and two
together
feeling the rush
of division
pull your
whole number
into pieces.
– Dane Karnick…
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Did you feel it stop?
Just for a moment.
The earth held its ground and waited for me.
I was running late, just a few moments
and would have missed you
without the earth’s patience.
I ran faster in its pausing
and caught your eye
as the air held its breath.
Did my pounding feet
match your heart?
I was flushed from racing,
a bit out of breath.
I wonder if you thought that, you?
And so we met,
just for that moment.
Me, rosy and breathless,
you, dressed lovely in your suit and tie
standing in line waiting for
lunch
“Yes, I’d like that. We can share.”
Tuna and tea for two.
Is that how love happens?
The earth’s master plan shuddering in earthquakes,
whispering in raindrops and pausing in moments?…
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Green and purple and blue light streamed into the church through the pictures of lambs and Jesus with children sitting on his lap. The congregation consisted of forty-seven Baptists, eleven Nazarenes, twenty-two Mormons, six Jews, one lone Muslim, seventeen who did not attend church but were nevertheless bowed in prayer, and a number of individuals who did not believe in God or define themselves as anything religiously. They were friends and parents and teachers and shop owners and doctors and liars and stealers – but they were all mourners. There was a baby who was crying and a ninety-six year old woman who was crying. They wore black pants with collared white shirts, and flowery skirts with gray blouses, and khakis, and dresses, and jeans, and suits.…
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When we were seven, Marshall and I would play astronauts and Martians. He was always the astronaut, and I was always the monster. By virtue of being 23 minutes older, and somehow much bigger, he always got to be the good guy, but he never let himself be the winner. He was always going down in a hail of laserfire or jumping on an imaginary bomb to save a bunch of imaginary lives.
I wonder whose life he imaged he was saving in the end.
I was the evil, ugly Martian, doomed to die, if I had been playing with anyone else. Not Marshall. Even though I always won, his incessant martyrdom always made me feel weaker. Already significantly shorter and skinnier, and much less athletic, he found a way to make me feel even more helpless by always being the one to sacrifice himself.…
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How much pain can the human heart endure was more than a rhetorical question for Jill at this point – it was more like how much pain could she endure, or continue to endure, because every day she had to endure it, and endure more of it than the day before, or so it seemed. The times when Anne was lucid were becoming less frequent, but Jill lived for those times, when Anne looked up from the bed with those sparkling brown eyes and remembered who she was. How are you, dear?, she would ask, more concerned for Jill than for herself. Are you getting enough to eat? You look thin as a bird, for Chrissakes. I should cook you something.
Jill always smiled at this, one of the few times she smiled anymore, but it quickly became not so funny.…
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