flight

see here the virtuous souls with their still-wet wings our grounded innocents 'fore they take flight into the air of a sky pushing with the hot currents we are in their eyes still seen as a high shelter in which to nest they will abandon the place together or apart to test the wing abiding the rules of a higher regulator who makes the call and we consent so that the...

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Glass Child

come with me she says, but I decline because I've been told coddling keeps the child in the cradle you're old enough to go alone but the figure she cuts when she's turned and walking away head hung, looking at the ground is as stinging to the conscience as a February wind to the eyes my daughter, now turned to go alone slender...

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Fire Child

we found a boy to make our own who lacked and desired and needed and burned a special boy into whom we infused our particular kind of healing waters needed to extinguish the fires of an infancy set and fanned by others "he'll be good for us?" she asked me, lying in bed "yes" "he'll need work?" (more a statement than not) "yes" "he needs us; to help him." (more a plea...

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The Old Man

i've been dreaming lately of an old man  that i'm sure is me in a future that i seem to fear sitting on a bench, in one example in some park, looking inward while casting a gaze out for something lost i know it's me now that i think of it because i recognize the sting of a clenched heart after a love has been wrenched violently from it the way...

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A Discussion Among Boys on a Beach

"the water is high," my son said to his two friends and a debate among boys on a beach was begun "yeah, but not to god" the first boy-friend replied. his name, jackson "yeah. the water wouldn't even be up to here to god" said the second. his name, nicholas "yeah, unless he was six years old" said my son to them, a proposal "yeah, but he would still be a giant" said nicholas, arguing "yeah" said jackson "god IS huge" said my son with surrender...

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The Dreamers of Dreams

We have a seasonal site at a campground close enough to home to allow us to care for the farm animals, but far enough away for us to feel escaped from the world. A good camp is not supposed to close out all sound, just the busy chatter that we've been fooled to believe is important; the same way those old handheld a.m. radios sound tinny and distant. It's...

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no rest

my son, he jumps off his bike that his legs and arms are still too small to master and he bounds across the road I'll just run instead! he battle-cries and gallops uproad toward siblings his abandonment is a retreat, a falling-back from a relentless gravity that has pulled him, since birth, away and up an incline toward something that is...

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Disney Tripping

We took the kids to Disney On Ice on Valentine's Day, thanks to the generosity of my employer, who received several comp tickets and took pity on me when he saw the family portrait-mural that stretches across my office wall. "Do you really have 8 children?" he asked. "Yeah. Yup." I get asked this a lot and the reactions range from incredulity to pity to fear. ...

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This Is The Motion Picture Soundtrack of Our Lives

where is our gloaming sky where is our rising tide the one that washes happy heroes to a sandy shore, alive? where is the swell of strings the vibrant song on wings the same that lifts embracing lovers and all the life it brings? are we really only seen as lost and sadly ever been left jilted at the glittering alter of all those silver screens? don't...

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Fun Fragments

Hammer Time Corrine's high school drama club participates in the state's one act play festival this March and I've been building the set for their production. Recently, I brought the hammer down onto my hand."Fucking cock-sucking whore!" I shouted and then threw the hammer across the stage and into the wings."Really, Dad?" Griffin asked me. I had forgotten he was with me."What?!""You had to throw the hammer?" Lactose Insolence Gabrielle insists...

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The Kemsen Crush

My 6-year-old son is in love with my teacher. I mean his teacher. Who used to be mine. No, I don't mean she used to be mine. Not mine mine in the leather-jacket-wearing, hickie from Kenickie kind of way. I mean she used to be my teacher. But I used to wish her to be mine in that other way.  Well, no. I don't mean I'd wished she'd given me hickies. I don't think I knew what a hickie even was when I was 13. I just mean she was my first teacher...

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It was the best of dimes....

I paid for three gallons of gas the other day. In dimes. I don't know what the most humiliating part of that day was, to be completely frank with you. Was it the actual act of handing the woman behind the counter 80 dimes? Or was it the fact that we even had 80 dimes in our house? Or how about the sphincter-tightening ride into town hoping to not run out of gas? Or the fear of running into someone at the gas station with whom I graduated high...

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