After a long day of travelling, Claire followed Robert through the hotel lounge to a table by the window. Soft piano music played, mingling with the low hum of conversation from customers seated sparsely throughout the lounge. The circular bar in the center of the room was empty of patrons, and behind it a bartender mixed drinks at a leisurely pace while talking to the lone server. Robert held Claire’s chair for her, then sat down across the table, their chairs angled so that they were not directly facing each other, but rather, looking out into the room.
The server approached the table to take their order. She was a friendly looking young woman, with thick, luxurious eyelashes and long flawless nails.
Claire studied Robert as he conversed amiably with the server.… ...continue reading
Frances pulled up to the steaming patch of road tar and eased the white City truck to a stop. From the driver seat she looked at the site and rubbed at her sore knees. She rolled a delicate cone of a cigarette without looking, and despite the rough tobacco it tapered perfectly from tip to tip without pucker or bulge.
Normally she’d be done work by now and already up home, but today she’d signed up for four hours overtime, same as she had yesterday and would tomorrow, too. With the winters coming harder and earlier, the extra hours were a Godsend. Bad winters hadn’t been a worry when the good firewood was still coming down from Canada. It wasn’t at all that Frances was against the new Americans First initiative—they didn’t make ‘em more patriotic than her, she always said—but she couldn’t help sighing to think of that hard oak and ash and cherry from before.… ...continue reading
My college history teacher said:
white flour fed oppression—
a false staple that starved nations
while filling the conqueror’s plate
Empty offerings persist,
served now on Styrofoam:
flimsy triangles of dough,
sides of ranch dressing,
class sets with covers that read
Of Mice and…,
corners curled, pages thinning—
a curriculum worn down
to a narrow canon
classrooms frigid in winter,
stifling in early summer.… ...continue reading
Lost amidst the sea and swirls
I am floating past gates of white
Misty waters and depths below
Seal my fate / a weeping demise.
Washed ashore / the aflame home
My brethren trudge past mud and sticks
(They’re all knowing and yet none-the-wiser)
I am found beneath sand and drunken tidepools.
Awakened through a crack / beating sunlight
Gathers the souls of my people… my people…
Dark mouths stretched across
Leering into saltwater sacrifices.… ...continue reading
Couldn’t ask for more, a cold drink, a sandwich and a shady place to sit after a long day in the Sun. Easy for complications to take over, and leave you uneasy, but with simple pleasures there is little to go wrong. Nor can those always looking over your shoulder find much for fault, when all that they see is that I enjoy simple pleasures. I have found that most of those sitting around waiting for chances to make threats are just as guilty as they want to think you are.
Looking for somewhere for a picnic lunch that won’t have people screaming, “We don’t want your kind here.” Is getting harder. Now they have put fingerprint readers at entrance to parks. It’s become safer to sit on the edge of toxic waste filled river.… ...continue reading
Rumi came back to Beacon Hill. Among the fine buildings of brick, there is an unusual little street that takes a turn. At the turn there is a terrace with a garden which has the primrose bush that Rumi loves.
Rumi can fly like the birds. He floated over the hill on the spring winds, and he alighted on the rooftop of the little house, made part of brick and part of wood, which was behind the terrace. The little house was not as fancy as the other Beacon Hill homes, but she was darling.
Rumi landed very softly, like a feather, but the little house knew right away that he was there!
“Oh, I’m so glad you’re back! I was afraid that you weren’t coming this year!… ...continue reading
It all happened in a little blue house.
I find that detail important, because everything was blue.
The walls, the furniture, the bed.
I began to see nothing but blue.
Feel nothing but blue until eventually I was suffocating because I forgot that humans can’t breathe underwater.
I tried to mend together the sun and the ocean
Tried to convince them they belong together.
That one cannot exist without the other.
But how do you mend a hole in the sky when your thread is made of sand that crumbles when you pick it up.
How do you wish the sun to save you when you’ve forgotten what it looks like?
– T. Martin
Author’s Note: “Blue” is about the house I lived in during the worst time of my life.… ...continue reading