Book o’ Verse

Don’t hold on to that wall. Don’t let it pull you backward to its fixed side. Hold my hand and now we glide.

Airplane seats never fit his body. Not just his legs, though there wasn’t enough legroom, that was for sure. And you lower the tray and it goes right up into his rib cage, like he’s a grown man sitting in a baby-sized high-chair. And the day is scraping baby food off his face with a … Read more

I was so angry, so spinning with all my anger I remember at one point saying to a good buddy that I was going to tell everyone I met for the next TEN years: “if you meet someone named [her name here] please give her a kick for me.” I figured the word would spread … Read more

I signed a lot of stuff today and I don’t mean to brag but no. I do. It was the way I curved that capital “C” in Cecil. and looped the “l.” My graceful scoop. The pen’s hurled weight. Like I was piloting a space plane made of jet black ink.

If we’re all drawing a face together I don’t want to draw the mouth. I’ll draw the hair — just lines, loose and easy. Or the eyes. But not the lips. The way they curve and join and hold back her teeth. Don’t make me draw the lips.

Forgot an old friend’s name tonight. I thought it was “David Shapiro, of Kansas” but it’s not, is it? It’s something else, something equally common unsearchable. Or maybe it is? Lordy lordy I’ve lost all confidence.

“It’s a multiple of a lot of different things.” Then somewhere down the line, you find yourself saying “It’s a syndrome.” You’re giving 75/25. Or 65/35. Holding back. Not out of laziness but from some sense that things are finite and you don’t want to spend it all. When the phone rings, you answer it … Read more

Never gave thanks. Never had blogs. Owned slaves. Some of them owned slaves. Were shorter than us on average. Yes, some of them fought against it tried to move things forward toward a blinding bright world but not all of them.

We played with sticks for a while, my people looking for wood that was strong and flexible, turning it into specialized sticks. Sticks for scratching for digging out hard to reach infected patches. Then we made the Torah.

The pencil they gave me was covered with paint. I scraped at it. Artisan, whole-leaf paint chips dropped off in spidery clumps. And now I can see, it is an artisan pencil. Made by a man in the mountains of Peru. Separated out from the base of a Peruvian Pencil Tree. Peru. It is a … Read more