So many years since those Madison days. Forty years. My plane lands in what’s still a small airport. No Starbuck’s. The temperature is 32 degrees. I miss those days of beer and Shakespeare. You could buy pitchers at the Rathskellar for $2.75, and $1 of that was a deposit on the pitcher. The Rathskellar is…

      There were times when you and Oakland saved me. Every time I needed saving, through the Madison years, I could drive to Oakland in twenty-four hours and feel at home. Remember the Oatmeal Minstrels? All those nights we ate your oatmeal cookies and played our guitars until the sun rose. That Audrey with the…

      My family and I were on our yearly camping trip. This time it was Kauaʻi, my father’s birthplace.       We were stocking up on camping supplies at a small Mom-and-Pop store in Waimea. The store owner was an old high school friend of my dad’s. Their “good old day” talk was pretty boring. Wandering…

The night before Christ- mas, even narcoleptics shouldn’t drink coffee

      You always ask if my mother knows I smoke. It’s growing old. But I still laugh, then ask about Albert again.       Your son scares me with his crooked face, his crazy eyes, his chipped teeth, his stuttered laugh that sometimes breaks into violent shrieks while he drools thick strings down his stubbled chin….

a cackling witch bright red lipstick her high pitched screechy voice clothed in black tatters a fire burning a pot boiling the twiggy broom she flew all staged in the garage an annual event she boiled babies served up their flesh in strips to sample orange celophane dry ice and slices of bologna I was…

The words you speak spout an armed force of meaning deployed to overwhelm me beating my brain with your Scrabble victory vocabulary triumphing over me while you further drop fancy phrases to boggle my mind always in a specially covert way that makes me think we are not ever having an actual conversation but some…

I stand here quietly, not moving in the middle of this smooth stream flow, listening to the water drift beneath the overhanging canopy of young and ancient trees, and to the many birds singing high and clear, the resonance of their different melodies wandering through this peaceful place of momentary refuge, echoing off the valley…

     The car’s exhaust fumes blast me and gravel spits at my feet. I stand alone in the dark. How can you leave someone like this?      I know it’s the words. The words you always regret. Words that fly out of your mouth when you’re at your worst. Words that are blurted out in such a…