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…
...continue reading
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?…
...continue reading
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.…
...continue reading
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.…
...continue reading
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.…
...continue reading
Under the blankets she shivers like she’s out in the snowstorm, not curled safe in our bed with the lights out. I close the door behind me, but I don’t move to warm her. She’s piled those blankets so high tonight, so high and so heavy. The heat’s turned way up in here. Outside, the snow falls for real, thick sheets of it tumbling from clouds that block the moonlight. A few stars shine through, though. Just enough light to see her by.
“Allie?” The pillow turns her voice to a bare murmur, like the voice she uses when I’m there beside her, our hands and hair twined together, one blanket sheltering us both. Like the voice I spoke with when I started school, mumbling at my shoes, before her kindness opened me up.…
...continue reading
My father was an old man. Seventy-seven years he had lived on this planet. One day he complained to me of a headache. It seemed mild at first, but toward nightfall he was massaging his temples, his face wreathed in discomfort. By the next day it had morphed into a meaty migraine, and he told me he heard rustlings in his ears. Clinkings and tinklings. In the evening my poor old pops spoke of whisperings. He said they came from inside his head, and that the voice was a young girl’s.
On the third day, my father was unable to get out of bed. Every time he tried to stand, he fell to the floor, head-first – as if something in there was too heavy, was pulling him down.…
...continue reading