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
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
when the rain lessened we hauled our plastic Adirondack chairs in one hand and Old Fashioneds in the other down to the river, down to the dock, and sat there – the dock or the river just beneath the current lifting the water through the slats soaking our shorts from below while the rain continued … More Rain on the River
If you can get past the pictures of men holding fish men in the bathroom mirror men shirtless in bed with their dogs men lifting weights in gyms men with guns men with cheap bottles of beer men with Maga Hats men in their cars men on motorcycles men on barstools men making kissy faces … More The Detritus of Hope and Unopened Scotch
In early October along the river’s edge, deer hooves have printed the mud with quotation marks, although they had nothing to report. They drank the cold water in silence and slipped back into the woods. It’s not yet five o’clock but the sun is already stumbling sideways and falling behind the Wisconsin treeline, rays flailing … More Undone
All I have is a list, a promise of 11% back, and an unwieldy cold wet metal cart into which I throw the too-big chainsaw gloves for men, the joint compound to hold naked seams together. I’m trying to reconstruct true north. In the garden center aisle with the grass seed, dozens of little birds … More The Birds of Menard’s II
Finally I drive away from that old house in the city where drama was spooling out across the little screen I held: alcohol, of course, family wounds, threats of suicide. I pocket that silenced screen like a take-out container of active angst – and I go to Menard’s, where I hear you can save big … More The Birds of Menard’s – I, uncut
Scientists say that distance equals speed times time but our universes collided and sailed a million miles apart even though the erosion of our hearts was glacial – each breath a tiny wave against the ruddy shore, each heartbeat washing itself away a little more. They say that speed is distance divided by time, but … More Valentine’s Day Worksheet
Out in a windswept January night under the black quilt of sky that is tucked tightly over the Keweenaw peninsula, the stone foundation of a barn lies unsleeping; instead she’s feeling, like a phantom limb, the heft and surety of the hay mow, the ache of splintered barn boards, the impatience of the rusted tractor, … More Phantom Limb
Halfway North 