30-odd feet at a time John’s ancestor stretched out his surveyor’s chain and measured the land from the already tired eastern edge of Indiana to the sunburned western brow of Nebraska, peering across the prairie toward the peaceful Pacific that must be there, and then as though returning to a passage in a book that … More Whippoorwill Creek Farm
It’s difficult but not impossible to kiss when you are both wearing baseball caps, you with your wet braids along your neck, your bodies warm in the cool wet grass, the hem of your pants soaked to your knees where you stand between parked cars beyond the rows and rows of grapevines in the inked-in … More A Little Turning
So my daylist is earnest indie sad girl carnival oatmeal Sunday and meanwhile advertised to me is a sweatshirt with a blue heron in a beanie that I trip over myself to order, and the throughline is a polka for this dung beetle plucking up the detritus of the human race (one two) patting it … More Dung Beetle Polka
The man I was married to for thirty years is standing behind his girlfriend at the Wallace pub, his fingertips light on her back. She is tall and thin and blonde and the four-inch heels of her lace-up boots chip off a piece of the cracked linoleum footrest when she leans on it. It’s not … More Following, following
It wasn’t Thanksgiving that got me, the overflowing table where he wasn’t for the first time – my windshield not cleaned the paper trash not taken to the burn barrel – No. It was a practical three pack of flashlights that did me in, the kind of thing that men of my father’s age buy … More Fleet Farm Translations
At the end of the week we dragged our various brokenness west on highway 29, across the Mississippi river, through the tangled Cities and landed on a Minnesota lake encircled with plenty. Not quite the wilderness but at night you can still see the stars and the light shines in yellow parallellograms on thick green … More How to Carry Your Broken Bones
Sidewalk slabs are replaced out of order one by one, year upon year, a broken football player’s teeth spit into the grass; the cool April sun genuflects and shines through the bright green blades, the shy ruffed hyacinth hiding behind the downspout. I see you there, says the yawning sun. I see your beauty. A … More A Reading from the Book of Sidewalk
But lo here is hot coffee and from the corner Nina Simone croons and there is a snowy slope to the silent white river stopped from its babble by a sliver of flat white sky like a shushing finger against chattering lips – This cabin is already stove through with falling pines or burned to … More The Cup is Already Broken
it’s the ritual of the envelope/ of the return address/ of your address/ of the stamp the card I will send to you is a time traveler, you I hold like a tiny beacon for a moment while outside darkness like a stray cat curls around the house and Sheila wrapped in a parka dispenses … More Decembering
We got an hour back on Sunday, hundreds of years ago, when there was still some modicum of hope. And then the wind came through like a train on Tuesday, pulling all the leaves down with it and heaping it into wet greasy piles along the road while people lined up and marked their ballots. … More Lane Assist
