• REAL TIME

    Reality is clearly something to be avoidedto be dressed up in tattery, tied in ribbons,perfumed, yet its fetid stenchis always lurking in the backgroundwaiting to pierce your nostrilsin an incautious moment until you retchand bring up the bile that marksthe darker moments of your life,the kind that lingers in the throatwhich no chocolate can erase.Reality…


  • YOU ARE INVITED

    I have to compliment you,after all you ignored mefor four years in high school,condemned me to the outcasts,the geeks, the losers, the barelytolerated and then only whenthe Headmaster was watching. I didn’t go to your parties,no one without an invitationever dared, was left to theclubs no one wanted to join,but I have to say I…


  • A RETURN SOMEDAY

    Some day I need to returnto Tokyo and walk its streetslistening for the soundtrackthat Haruki Murakami requiresof the city, bebop jazzin Shinjuku, classical whenwandering Asakusa and Senso-ji,and rock on the streets of Shibuya. I have often been there, butmy soundtrack was thatof horns and the clatterof a pachinko parlor, orthe pitched giggles of younggirls walking…


  • DREAMS

    It starts quickly and unexpectedly. You do not know when it will start, why, or what it will bring. There are times when even after it is done, you cannot be certain what it was, what it did, what it meant. Often, though, you forget it before you have time to capture it. It is…


  • ONE DAY

    We stood trapped betweenslack-jawed and reverentlooking at the woman sittingcross-legged outside the doorwaylovingly fashioning a pot,her gnarled fingers gentleon the yielding clay. Others this day fashionedrings and pendantssimple tools on silverand one of a kind treasuresthey would lay outon blankets hoping wewould want morethan just a photograph. Our day on the Taos Puebloended too early,…


  • SHARED VISION, ONCE REMOVED

    Stevie and I were probably eightsitting on the front stoop of our flat,he the only one in third grade smaller than me.There was no snow to be seen,none in the sky, none on the frozenand still patchy lawn, just the windof an always cold December day.Christmas is coming, I saidaren’t you excited, with all the…


  • TROVE

    He says he has founda treasure trove of home movies8mm film in small metal cans,the sprocket holes intactfor the most part, my childhoodI thought captured on 35mm slidesthat I am too cheap to payto have digitized, my adoptiveparents ill at ease with a cameraassuming always back lightingwas preferable, and I admitit was nice to be…


  • MY ANNA

    Along the banks of the barge canalin the village park, a manolder, his hair white, almosta mane, sits on the breakwallfeeding Wonder breadto the small flotilla of ducks.Tearing shreds of crustfrom a slice, he casts itonto the water and smilesas they bob for the crumbs.He tells them the storyof his life as thoughthey were his…


  • HAUNTING

    The ghosts of my birth parentsblow into my dreams asso many white sheets tornfrom the clotheslineby gale winds, fly over me,at once angels and vulturescarrying off memoriescreated from the clayof surmise and wishful thinking. I invite their visits, frailbranches to which to clingin the storms of growing age,beginnings tenuous anchorsto hold against time, knowingthe battle…


  • ON THE SHELF

    He found the cup by the curb one morning walking to the bus. He rarely notice things on his walk, thinking always about the day ahead. But this day he saw it, picked it up and put it in his messenger bag intending to clean it later, when he got home after work. He had…