In Conversation

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 …

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 …

     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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

American Night Cracked evening bells keep ringing though their muted song rings black and blue. The craven launch their bannered march, these times of change prompt stomping feet, the leather cracked, freedom bent back toward iron walls of altered fact. They pull each law loose with their teeth dig under flesh toward arid bone. Hot …

Los Techadores June 12, 2025 There is a roofing crew above the street where my morning starts and they are blasting Mexican radio. Ranchero accordions chased by an excitable spanish-speaking DJ and it makes me so happy to hear it.  Because the Hispanic kids aren’t playing in the yards anymore and their abuelas don’t come …

To the Silence That Raised Me You taught me how to hear the hum behind the nothing— the way a faucet drips in a house no one lives in. The static between radio stations. The breath before the apology that never came. You tucked me in with unanswered questions, stitched bedtime stories from the lint …

Slave Labor We’re into the second day of chrome shop training with Fernando, and I’m still not entirely sure he understands a fucking word I’m saying. I continue speaking what passes for English in Alabama accompanied by frenetic hand gestures, pantomime that becomes increasingly agitated with his every expression of surprise and disbelieving shake of …