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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
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 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 …
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 …
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 …
My golden retriever Sherman pees every time I approach him to trim his matted fur. It doesn’t matter if I’ve just brought him outside, or that it’s been three years and I’ve never cut him once. Though the trimming terrifies him, Sherman looks on as …
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 …