-
MESA MORNING
Out here, he warned, you should always be on the lookout for snakes by day, not that they will go out of their way to attack you, but stray into their territory and the Western Diamondback will give you a quick lesson in awareness. They hide among the scrub sage and in the arroyos, but…
-
DEMENTIA
He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague…
-
KIKE
Third grade, religious school kikes, us, then a backhand raised, drawn, quickly dropped, below a reddened face, sleeve pulled up 145233 in black between elbow and wrist and a tear, perched fearing to fall. Never again, and nothing more, later, same arm ruffling hair, smoke clinging to aging skin, no older when he walked in…
-
CALLER
It’s Sunday, so I know, before long I will have the nagging thought that I should call my mother. I’ve had this thought for years, once acted upon it with regularity, listened patiently for her weekly list of things I needed to help her with, since I never visited to do the work with her…
-
KAFKA
June 13, 1896, Prague a warm day, old stone schul you stood before the minyon wearing the skullcap repeating ancient words that lay on paper, rehearsed sounding false on a tongue swollen in anxiety. Your tallit, white woven with blue threads hung at your knees fringe fingered, rolled and unrolled, twisted until touched to skin…
-
GOING DOWN
Hell is a place where what you least desire becomes eternally yours, or so we were told as children, well not us, not the Jewish kids, for us Hell was our mothers’ finding that copy of Playboy we stole from our father’s stash our mother didn’t know about, and which he would deny, throwing us…
-
ON MORTALITY
Death was never something we considered, until that certain, ill-defined moment when our immortality suddenly disappeared, and in its place was a reality to be avoided. Even once death became a shadow, always lurking around us, we kept our face toward the sun, so that death might not be seen in the bright light of…
-
A SUDDEN DEPARTURE
You sneaked away one night. You were there, but while sleep claimed me, you were gone without notice or warning. Where should I look for you? In these barren hills where the spirits of the first nations roam, looking for their ancestral land? Where should I look for you? Wandering these verdant fields where a…
-
NIGHT
In the end, it always comes down to night, regardless of the moon, if any, it’s faint light drowned by the city’s oppressive glow, headlights, streetlights and once, spotlights painting the sky, traceable down to that new place we don’t wish or can’t afford, would never dare to go. Death is omnipresent, his shadow is…
-
THE GIFTS
They brought him myrrh on a flaming salver and all he could do was say “This is something I would expect from a butcher or a carpenter, and the camera angles would never work, so bring me napalm or punji stakes that we have proven to work.” They brought him ripe oranges and the sweet…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
an old writer and his words 