• THE LADIES

    It is an ungainly beast and its cry, as much a bleat as a roar, can pierce the air and is never easily ignored. There are far larger to be found, and far more beautiful. Some have voices that melt anger incite passion, alleviate pain. Some sing in a register so low touch and hearing…


  • MORNING

    It is late morning and with five hours sleep I am renting my fourth cup of coffee I look forward to night.


  • YANG YIN THERE

    It’s the difference between anthracite and lignite he said with his sort of all-knowing smirk. Quite to the contrary, she snapped back, it’s the difference between pahoehoe and aa. He clearly wasn’t pleased, those examples are like night and day and you’re in the dark. Only you can’t begin to tell between makai and mauka,…


  • CULINARIA

    My repertoire was so much wider then for that is the mis-appreciated burden of youth. My bookshelves groaned under the weight of a couple of hundred cookbooks, tomes focused on the apple, fish, chicken, or on isolated corners of what seemed to me to be an infinitely large world. Azeri food seemed a continent apart…


  • AND TODAY?

    He walks with what he considers a swagger. He will gladly stare you in the eye, and you will look away. He prides himself on constancy, knowing you will arrive each day, knowing you will bring nothing in response to his request. He’ll turn his back on you and ignore you once again. Then he…


  • ON ROMULUS

    For years all I wanted was a working familial cloaking device. The kind the Romulans had in the early days of Star Fleet. It was easy to feel overwhelmed amid them, teaming together for holidays, reunions. I never could, I never did disappear though she felt my sometime silence oppressive. Now that I am part…


  • YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

    I received the invitation today, but I won’t be attending. I’m not inclined to RSVP, for that will only drive home the fact that I couldn’t afford to attend. They have to know this, and if they don’t, well… That really is their problem. My mother said you should always RSVP, yes or no, but…


  • RETURNING

    Time has no role to play in any of this. Time isn’t pleased by the prospect, it prefers to be ever present, ever escaping, even as it is arriving. It is quirky that way. It is constant yet it loves to give the impression of being variable. Einstein noted this, and anyone returning from a…


  • GOING ON THIRTEEN

    He is four, has been for five months now, but when you ask them how old he will be at his next birthday he doesn’t pause, says, “thirteen,” with a smile that shouts, “yes I know how to count quite well, but sometimes I just choose not to!” He is slowing down, actually, the last…


  • FESTIVAL

    They ebb and flow like tides down the half-empty street from venue to venue, many with that lost look of years in the desert, driven on by promised the land of honey notes, the mother’s milk of jazz. The event passes flap in the breeze created by their wake, some checking programs, their personal map…