Solstice
Not all holiday traditions are merry and bright.
Category: writing
screenplay writing
Dive
The prompt I got for this screenplay was that it had to involve New Year’s Eve and the song “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. The rest is based on true events.
poems writing
BETTER HOMES
I am the worms in the yellow walls of the Concord house caused by the shit-leaking upstairs toilet. I am the molding water spot we both saw but would not ever speak of. I am the side yard weeds I said we’d pull. You are the retaining wall, crumbling, that we can’t afford to fix just yet. Just yet. I am the broken tooth becoming abscessed. I am the dishes left, resentfully, unscrubbed. I am…
poems writing
HAIKU FOR MORE WHISKEY
Curled up in the cup of a slingshot – bands taught – which giant will I fell? note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their intended order, start here.
poems writing
PEPERE
We got the call and went to visit mem. No vigil. Just a business transaction. Numbers, at least, we could try to comprehend. She spoke of insurance, rings, inheritance. Bryson got pep’s final slice of cherry pie. Walter got the fresh-pressed suits and ties. The funeral was a complete fucking lie. Father spoke of the glory of Jesus Christ. He’d never known the glory of Gene Lemay, Who only went on Sunday to keep mem…
poems writing
AND GARDENS
That fall morning we moved to Concord the neighbor made a V with his fingers and wriggled his arm like a charmed snake. High school ASL class failed us so he wrote on a legal pad: VINES. He mimed the digging and ripping I didn’t plan on doing, and pointed to the hydrangeas lining his side of the ruins. I recognized the next sign: Two hands around his throat. But yard work, as is wrote,…
poems writing
ON WRITING
for me writing poems is vomiting onto the bathroom floor after a blacked out thursday night I hold off until I can’t and then the act itself – convulsive, jagged glass and bile, perverse relief – sometimes I see patterns in these ink blot tile emissions revealing to me omens better left unprophesized note: this is one of a series of poems in a chapbook I’m working on entitled “yellows”. to read them in their…
poems writing
PASTITSIO
raquel is in the bathtub and the dog still has his testes. on tv they eat pastitsio which donna brought with your marijuana when you were still well enough to mispronounce pastitsio. there’s a groundhog in the garden we planted and never watered but still i blame him for the fruitlessness. its three months now and I know I haven’t visited your headstone but the muffins smell like nutmeg and at least I remember to…
poems writing
EMPTIES
While I was hiding empties in the bookshelf of my office you spoke to a recorder I gave you for your birthday, saving words I should have asked you for in person. I bought you audio versions of books I should have read aloud myself. I sent Raquel with chicken and rice soup while I refilled whiskey handles in the cabinet. I didn’t take you to the zoo to see Fiona ‘til you were dirt…