Rain would have been more fitting. Clouds. Torrential downpours. Some freak hurricane. Not this nurturing warmth that was carried in the breeze along with the songs of springtime robins. The boys were out with their father picking up new fishing poles and getting something for lunch. Patrick felt it best that Isabella, his wife, the… Continue reading Pink Bow Untied
Top Score
Whenever I would get to see you, when it was our time, I felt I was stepping up to the challenge of an arcade pinball machine. Feeling below the cabinet for that hidden power switch, I’d seek you out. Reaching into my coat pocket for my busted burner phone and punching in the sequence of… Continue reading Top Score
Burning the Tracks
A red glow washed over the amorphous designs on the table. Thin, bent tubes housing neon bordered the metallic siding. She sat in the hollow space carved out by the fish tank wall wrapping behind their customary booth. He hadn’t answered her question, the question she had asked him her to pose. She knew he… Continue reading Burning the Tracks
A Plate for Pickles
There are many things Nancy does regularly. She looks out the window in her flat for hours on end. She sees people leave for their jobs in the morning. She sees them return to their homes in the evening. She cleans her flat every morning. She picks up the phone and has lengthy conversations. She… Continue reading A Plate for Pickles
The Sieve Bored Holier
"I am the place in which something has occurred." — Claude Lévi–Strauss What is here labelled as "something," must be aggrandized. "Something" is too broad a descriptor. So, is it more direct to say I am the place in which many a thing has happened? Is this a better means of explaining in a single… Continue reading The Sieve Bored Holier
An Evening Out in Fishtown, or the shabbily doctored-up bits of observation I typed into my phone on the evening of August 19, 2016.
Find no purpose here!—unless purpose can be distilled from the peculiarities of the sights and sounds of one man's collection of lines taken down while pretending to send text messages during a summer evening out in an eclectic Philadelphia neighborhood. Frankfort Hall. Beer garden. Biergarten? I’ll settle on the former. This is a haven… Continue reading An Evening Out in Fishtown, or the shabbily doctored-up bits of observation I typed into my phone on the evening of August 19, 2016.
Bad Business
Habit had me walking home along the trolley rails late at night when no one else was on the road. A girl with a bag hanging on her hip was coming down the hill next to my building. She saw me stepping off the rails and onto the sidewalk. She passed my door as I… Continue reading Bad Business
Conviction
I fell in love with a girl named Conviction. We are inseparable. When I walk, I walk with Conviction. When I speak, I speak with Conviction. Before her I was faithless, with her I believe.
Yule
Fingers of a lady sitting on the evening train viciously storm the pages of sparkling new book simply entitled Christmas Poems. With a curious smile I peer down from where I stand and remind myself it is the 18th of June.
Eight Last Minutes of Light
The hours behind the sun stretch out to the curve of the universe then turn an inverted trek unto the shadowed earth, the space heater long gone out. Time cannot be heard in outer space. Its needle tip flashes to prick the fringe of fabric the patchwork quilt a chair-bound scientist wove with threads on… Continue reading Eight Last Minutes of Light
Temperance of Permanence
She met him when neither of them could stand to be alone. They remedied this by getting together. Now they’re face to face and he’s trying to tell her how now he can’t seem to be with anyone. The tightrope walk between being available and being alone is an act he’s made his own. Acrobats… Continue reading Temperance of Permanence
Open Wide | Uber Ride
This one time when I was young the casing of a popcorn kernel hugged a hind tooth in my mouth for the better part of a month. That tooth has a number. My dentist is in her early 30s and she has that early 30s pep about her that most girls that age have forfeited… Continue reading Open Wide | Uber Ride
Cinematic
It is a little-known fact that when you look at the back of a movie poster you see a mirror image of the picture on the front. The same goes for how the images look when you stand behind the movie screen itself. Spend enough time in the seats of a cinema, and you will… Continue reading Cinematic
Middleton
Middle age endows its members with, amongst strands of grey, bushels of gifts. Most are neglected, others embraced, but none must go unnoticed. Years accumulate, begging the excavation of long-buried relics—memories tucked under blankets of time. Unlike meticulously dusted deposits of Jurassic carbon, the artifacts of days past have a tendency to uproot hurriedly from… Continue reading Middleton
Measurable Time
INT – A MODEST DWELLING – LATE NIGHT The slim frame of ALEC passes a doorway where a man with grey in his beard sits facing the other direction. BARRY stirs in his chair and calls the figure he hears rustling in the other room to come speak with him. BARRY speaks, inaudibly, to the… Continue reading Measurable Time
