On:

I don’t remember when it startedbut the end came last Tuesday.I’d taken a Xanax and slept all day,seeing an old girlfriendand my dead dogin dreams or nightmaresor some other hell that I’ll get to reliveif I don’t get this one right.And when I finally wokeI couldn’t ignore what all theContinue Reading

On:

The Portland Pessimist Society was founded in 1984 by Felicia Gay, Rose Brightwell, Gladys Hope, and Joy S. Young. The PPS credo is a four-point “Litany of Grievances”: (1) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz is the worst person to have ever lived.(2) Be disheartened.(3) Sunshine on the shoulder may lead to skinContinue Reading

On:

I stare out the window, a wistful sigh dangling off my chapped lips. From forty-four floors above the ground, the tiny people look like little ants – ants scurrying about in their heels and skirts and suits, ants with their solid-colored briefcases and someplace important to be. Ants with longContinue Reading

On:

Part I: A severed head with its eyelids cut off.  The floating mass, rounded by gravity, orbiting a star, hosted billions of little organisms that named themselves human. They received our gift. Part II: Pandemic From onset to death, it requires one to five days. The average time is threeContinue Reading

On:

At Miss Hooker’s funeral I’ll fall inlove with her all over again, red hairand green eyes and freckles and her eyes closedlike they used to be when she recitedthe Lord’s Prayer at the end of SundaySchool class and I peeked to see how she looked with them closed, maybe asleepContinue Reading

On:

We endure. We get by.We wither and die. The ends draw us in.The river stays dry. The plains sing a songof bitter lament. The mountains think betterand will not repent. Seasons turn, climates change.We cry from the wheel, in vain, remain. We endure. We get by.We wither, and then, weContinue Reading

On:

It was summer and the heater was on. Bob couldn’t turn it off. The 1947 Pontiac he was driving chugged along on flat open road. The car had been restored from brown, back to its original colors, teal and seafoam. Before the restoration, we had known these colors were theContinue Reading

On:

A man is mowing his lawn at dawn with Airpods on in a yard five houses down. He is listening to a convicted felon describe fugue states and contemplating the utter silence of his street. It has been almost eight months since his wife left with Arwen, their Bichon Frise,Continue Reading