Jun 30
Bloody From three o’clock in the predawn haze I stay awake thinking about how not to make my colonoscopy a Tarantino movie. These days it is never too early or too late for the news to break. I kill a mosquito only after it has a bellyful. Is that twice the sin? My blood and …
Jun 29
The Proud Father His bottom lip quivers as he rises before the judge, the jury, and the television cameras. He is your son, your only child, and he recently turned eighteen. In his new navy-blue suit and tie—the navy-blue suit and tie you bought him with the money you and your wife had saved for …
Jun 28
ORLANDO June 5, 1990 Her nipples are aspirin Which I take with water. The moon melts like butter in the fog of five a.m. Morning turns to glasses of red wine And moans of neighbors fucking. She holds me and I call her River, call her Night, kiss her voice: the sound of rain upon …
Jun 27
20% I only went once to my rapist’s grave don’t know how he died or how to find out his obit informed me five years late faded mausoleum flowers grant lifelong peace took an hour to find him city cemetery, by the zoo Some days I stay alive because I have more graves to visit …
Jun 26
Crook I’m at the bar at 11 am thinking about Thomas Hardy because he uses the word wagonette in that poem I like and I can’t help but wonder if you fall off the wagonette maybe the fall isn’t as bad as falling off the wagon maybe you don’t lose your job or your wife …
Jun 25
Man on the Spot On a Florida beach, burrowed down in sand, I watch the shapes of swimmers bobbing in and out of waves, a pod of dolphins in the distance in sleek gray ballet, a manatee trolling in the shadows for some tasty weeds. There’s a guy on a board out beyond the flags …
Jun 24
For Fernando One day Fernando is here, the next day he is gone, like a Middle Eastern restaurant in rural Alabama. We sing songs to honor the two days he spent with us, straining his guts out to lift forty pounds of metal off a rack. Fernandooooo! Gone but not forgotten That lazy Guatemalan …
Jun 23
Suicide, By Cop We are on our way to the trailer. 2/3rds the way down the 108 when a line of cop cars seal off the highway in both directions. Start putting on their bulletproof vests and speaking into a megaphone to this old blue pickup that has parked itself in the middle of the …
Jun 22
Gizmo As usual, murderers and cheats were in charge and forcing catastrophe on the rest of us. A woman of about my age who looked teasingly familiar stumbled out of the smoke. My mind was a tangle of questions. “Is that your” – I didn’t know what to call it – “‘gizmo’?” I asked. She …
Jun 21
Nemesis Lenny Kaplan knew that the wise move, the political move, the enlightened career move, was to stay silent. Though at first he tried, he also knew who he was, and more importantly, who he did – and didn’t – want to be. Still relatively new to L.A., and even newer to the movie business, …
