person_pin Essay Archives

Why Do I Love Poetry

Issue No. 293 ~ October, 2021

Why do I love poetry? Well, it’s none of the usual—beautiful words, lofty thoughts, noble sentiments. I can get all that from Tolstoy or the Bible. No, I love poetry, good poetry, because it is efficient. In a few great lines one can become aware …

Built for Survival

Issue No. 290 ~ July, 2021

You move across country, trading East Coast city for West Coast suburbs. You rent an apartment. You move into a house. In the city you longed for the ease of the suburbs. Life should be calmer, slower, simpler. But in the suburbs you long for …

Ten Minute Essay in Times Font

Issue No. 287 ~ April, 2021

The title itself could distract me, if it came before anything I was meant to write, and stopped me up before the first sentence had come. An idea had been there or maybe just a glance of one? All would vanish with the name.             …

Tequila Rhymes or How to Write a Poem

Issue No. 286 ~ March, 2021

The act of writing a spoken word poem is like reading a recipe for a cocktail. The first time you do it, you will follow the directions exactly. – When it calls for an engaging title, you will spend hours writing and erasing ideas. When …

Memento Mori

Issue No. 284 ~ January, 2021

I think about death a lot. But not in a morbid way, sitting in dimly lit corners of dreary hotels, chain-smoking and muttering Albert Camus quotes. Only Albert Camus does that. The feeling I have towards death is not anticipation but apprehension. A curious nervousness …

The Yellow House

Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

The old Victorian house is surrounded by a chain-link fence, paint peeling, waiting for someone to gentrify her (to ruin her). I run my fingers across the yellow house on the computer screen. This is where my Mother lived in the life she had before …

On Day 63 I Went For A Walk

Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Having been wary of the yellow funnel-like flowers of Cascabela Thevetia since 2003, the tree was looking radiant in the full strength of its lime-green and honey-yellow on the 53rd day of lockdown. During those days of summer’s arrival, purple sunbirds would frequent the neighborhood …

Freedom

Issue No. 283 ~ December, 2020

Oh, how they pound, raising the sound. We are winding on a road in the mountains somewhere in southern California. I’m too young to know which mountains or what road, but I know where we just came from and where we are going. We ride …

Schwinn Five Speed

Issue No. 282 ~ November, 2020

At the light at the west end of the St. John’s Bridge I turn right and coast down to the intersection with Highway 30, enjoying the last bit of easy riding. The 13 miles from my house to Newberry Road is almost paper-flat. The bridge …