A soft voice adrift in a sea of sound. (If you'd like to, say hello.)...
Tonight I study my water hands, tracing mounds and plains from the heart line's beginnings beneath the middle finger, terminating where mercury meets outer mars, to the quick crease of fate lost between Luna and Venus. My left hand lacks a life line. On the dominant duke, the depth of my zest stretches from upper palm to the grid of my wrist. I walked this same path without knowing why while…
There are supposed to be six suites for unaccompanied cello inside this sleeve. The second and fifth movements are missing, leaving only two-thirds of a three-LP set. A sliver of scotch tape that once kept the torn protective material from falling apart has fused with what it failed to save. Now it sticks out like the stub of an amputated finger. Pointing. Accusing. Before this album was mine, it…
Not long ago, I found an interesting outpost while staggering down the information superhighway. Its caretaker had some things to say that aligned with my own feelings about what the online world was once and what it could be again. There was a longing for small communities fuelled by meaning and vulnerability that made me nod with recognition. I was getting ready to type up an email when I felt a…
Yesterday a stillborn cyclone scattered strips of hollow gold everywhere I looked. A reminder that there are no seasons in this city. Just one long dissonant song they never play on the radio. Today the clouds are clustered inkblots on the first page of a poem the sky wrote without meaning to. The last lines give us a moon too tired to swell to its true size. You sleep through the second stanza in…
"The quality or quirk you most wish you could wash away is exactly the thing that's going to make someone fall in love with you," she said, admiring insects no one else could see. He caught one and cupped it in his hands. "Look," he said. "a lightning bug." They watched the soft searchlight of its stomach glow warning-white and smiled.
The email from his boss read: "Thank you for the fruit bowel. I enjoyed it very much." He tried to work out what the small intestine of a bean or a berry might be. Maybe it was the mesocarp. Or the fibrous threads clinging to the pit when he pulled a peach apart. Or the sieve elements shuttling sugar through the bloodstream, fuelling the soft flesh of a ripe fig. He felt a flutter behind his…
There are so many people here writing such beautiful things. So many poets and painters and programmers and tellers of their own personal truth that move me. Sometimes there's a guestbook or an email address that makes it possible for me to say so in a place it might be seen. Just as often, there's no way to connect, and all my words die in the womb. I guess I've never wanted to be a quiet voice…
This question has always baffled me a bit. It's almost absurdly simplistic. Such a small thing that just sort of sits there and stares at you. And yet there are as many ways to respond as there are stars in the sky, and not one wrong answer among them. Everyone has a different engine driving what they do. I don't think my "why" has changed as much as my ability to harness it has. If asked to name…
There is a tear in the terra firma, the ground baked brown and gold where green should be. And though I know nothing has settled here but dirt and dead grass, I sometimes seem to see a rabbit wresting sleep from soil when I stand at a window that warps worry into wonder at the speed of grieving.
I was raised Roman Catholic, but I haven't seen the inside of a church in almost half as long as I've been alive. The truth is I'm not sure what I believe anymore when it comes to the idea of life after death. I'd like to think there's more to this than what we see. That the soul goes on in some way after the strange cage that contains it breaks down. If we're allowed to live again, and if we get…