Writing without an editor can lead to dumb shit like, “deep writing.” That was painful to re-read. Sorry about that. It was a lazy way to say that writing can sometimes be hard, especially when writing about trauma. Content Warning: This episode contains a…
Keep ReadingAt What Point Does It Stop Being a Photograph? The Moment Has Passed Even as You Click the Shutter Everything That Follows Is a Story Made From a Memory Told With Light…
Inspired by a John Martini sculpture. in her previous lifeshe held up…
Every time I imagine telling the story I start with you. It’s…
We’re hanging out on the golf course at midnight. We dropped acid a couple hours ago and it’s kicking in. We’re atop the highest hill. One of us smells oregano. We get on all fours and sniff around. No shit, oregano. That’s weird. There’s…
Writing without an editor can lead to dumb shit like, “deep writing.” That was painful to re-read. Sorry about that. It was a lazy way to say that writing can sometimes be hard, especially when writing about trauma. Content Warning: This episode contains a…
he came up onan eagle on a sandbarlooking over his shoulderbloody beak drippingwith dead cormorant it lost the gazeand flew up and awayleaving him to wonderabout the falling man tin the newspaper hor was it real life e fear is a lesson fshe taught…
I’m sure he loved me but I never felt the kind of fatherly love a boy is supposed to know. He wasn’t capable of expressing it. By the time he tried, I was in my forties. I grew fond of him in his later…
My life is not all misery and woe. On the contrary, I have a happy, privileged and blessed life. Sure, I have endured a lot. I have struggled, especially emotionally. I have had countless failings. Made a lot of mistakes. Hurt some people and…
Frankie’s death, in 1999, was the last occasion for my family to gather. I’ll never forget standing in the living room at Ethel’s (and Frankie’s) house after the memorial. I looked at the seven of us and thought, “Frankie was the first of us…
My paranoia began when I started taking LSD at the age of fifteen. Does that seem young? I knew a family in Franklin, the Osbournes. Mary Osbourne was given a dose of acid on her 10th birth by her older siblings. Her little brother…
I’m not sure I am actually a participant in this dream. I may be simply a witness — as if I were watching a TV show while standing in the midst of it. Jason Biggs has been transported into this room, this reality, from…
PERFECT HEXAGON HONEY COMB HONEY WAX THOUSAND YEAR BEES REVERED DEIFIED ANCIENT CULTURES BEE GODDESSES EGYPT TEMPLE MOTHER GODDESS NEITH HOUSE BEE MINOAN SUPREME GODDESS POTNIA PURE MOTHER BEE CYBELE MELLONA ANCIENT ROME AUSTEJA LITHUANIA BRAHMARI DEVI INDIA BEYLA FREYA NORWAY COLEL CAB PORTRAYED…
Language Doctor! arrives on time a few minutes early. Strawberry Alarm Clock destined for wine-thirty pm. Bazooka Jo Jo spikes a watermelon with fish solids. I came with an expectation, where the hell is my RazzBerry scone? Turn up the spice!…
Flan! As in, burnt honey and caramel, with a creamy, silky texture. A fresh baked hazelnut cookie dipped into a dry Vin Santo. White pizza with grana padano, pine nuts and fennel at a Scicilian sidewalk cafe. Fresh picked apricots on a sunny Parisian…
The way Frankie killed himself was cruel. The act itself is inherently cruel to loved ones but he did something that was diabolically clever. For most of his 41 years, Frankie lived with Ethel. I find that incomprehensible. He was the first of us…
I’m thinking of a song. You know this song. Everyone does. Some of you already think you know the song I’m thinking of. This is because most memories are recalled by association. The third sentence of this paragraph has an implied meaning: that the…
experts on dopingtalk about paper townsthe view like a dog (each line is lifted verbatim from random tweets in my feed)…
big blood of christ glasseshanging from the book shelfa crown of sonnets (each line is lifted verbatim from random tweets in my feed)…
if U were a frogU would not belaughing, fucking, and dying half-way (each line is lifted verbatim from random tweets in my feed)…
The only artifact I have from my childhood is a deck of Tarot cards I acquired when I was 14. I didn’t share my interest in Tarot with anybody back then. It was just something I explored by myself whenever I had a chance…
Ethel. Born Ethel Marie Jennings in 1933. Sometime in the 70’s she began using the name Marie. She claimed Marie as part of her healing journey. Ethel was the little girl who was sexually abused by three older brothers. Ethel was the meek, timid,…
I attended an online writing class this morning (Thanks Roz) and one of the prompts resulted in this short episode. It surprised me how easily this came because I’ve never written about this memory before. I’m including it here because it feels like a…
I was raped. I think. No, not raped. Sexually abused. No, not that. Well, yes, that, but that was at home and more subtle than the incident that I’m talking about now. That was subtle abuse. There’s nothing subtle about it. And we are…
stories about our childhoodknown to be trueeven if we don’t believememory is oursor notthe way memory works killing blacksnakes from a boatin the pond behindart’s corner storeyellow greendill picklescrisp tart and perfectthirty three cent smokesmars bar under our belthe caught us the first timewouldn’t…
(Some names in this story have been changed, some have not.) I was taking a break in a writing class when I decided to google my childhood rapists. I was 60 years old and it had never occurred to me to do that before.…
At What Point Does It Stop Being a Photograph? The Moment Has Passed Even as You Click the Shutter Everything That Follows Is a Story Made From a Memory Told With Light…
when i diewhen i’m gonewhen i’m deadand gonemourn for mekeen and wailkick and cry don’t toastdon’t singdon’t celebratedon’t praise keen and wailbawl, howlsnivel, blubberand moan it was not my timeit was not for the besti did not want to goi did not blowthe scene…
before a thing can be whole,there must be shards,scattered and smothered before a mirror can be whole,it must be broken before a thing can be kintsugi,it must be kintsukuroi, in the hallway is a mirror,while passing this mirror,we raised our fist,and we broke it…
let us now sing the cobalt bluesthat we may emerge from ourchronic circadian desynchronization,that we consider and wonder how it isthat every 2, every 7, every 9 weeks,our bodies obliterated and re-formed,regurgitated and re-born ofarchaic remnants of ancestors let us now wonderwhere but in…
the beginning is not the beginning, this is how it starts but this is not the beginning, the beginning was before, the beginning was before that time, that time was a new beginning, that time was a death and a rebirth, the beginning was…
Exactly what happened is not known. The details of the event are unknowable. There has never been an inquiry into the particulars of the event. The precise actions or inactions are not known. The actions are unknown. The inactions are unknown. Unknowable...…
literal prose:we know how this endsdeath smiles every time they visitto datethey have been responsiveto our refusalto participate they usually comesin biker blackfaded leatherwhite pillsleather jeans oral reptiles:we know how this startedderivative sins it always goes the samewe might thinkthe frequency mightmake it easiermight…
I am a sixty-one-year-old white male of English and Irish descent. I have a genetic disposition for acne, baldness and depression. I am taller than average and slender. Clothing rarely fits me well. I was lied to as a child and things were done…
Inspired by a John Martini sculpture. in her previous lifeshe held up the roofof a high school gymnasium she misses the sneaker chirpsand the thap thap thapof bouncing orange ballsless than she enjoysbeing upright in the sunbearing only the weightof an imaginary fruit bowlon…
1976. I run into Mark in the Cap’n Kidd. I believe I have to die, I say to Mark. We’re drinking Bud long necks at the bar. We all have to die, Mark answers. Of course but that’s not what I mean. What do…
Every time I imagine telling the story I start with you. It’s as obvious a place to start as it isn’t. You came into my life almost 30 years after it happened and only stayed a little while. I don’t remember your acquisition the…
the universe emergedfrom the gapbetween my scapulaeand follows meeveryam where I go a hovering entiretyabove behind my headwhirling devilishlyI shall never it see I took up yogatwisting asana (plural)and meditation (singular)with open eyesin the front of the mirror and yet stillI only sense the…