Author Archives

Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.

• Irregular verb patterns and dreams

  By Bill Pearse on February 13, 2017 • ( 13 )

  I went on the side of the house that still feels like the country and had a leak there, spied the full moon through the trees out too many nights in a row now, bleary eyed and runny; I saw… Read More ›

• A branch the size of an oar on a medieval slave ship

  By Bill Pearse on February 11, 2017 • ( 16 )

  

  I worked a couple hours in the yard cleaning up branches and breaking down limbs clipping, sweeping, yanking out roots and pruning, stuff we probably should have done in the fall—then just got in the car and drove out to… Read More ›

• ‘Where he’d really be’ (for Alfred Lambert)

  By Bill Pearse on February 10, 2017 • ( 6 )

  

  There’d been some sun for a few minutes in the morning but then it went back to gray and acted like it would storm. The days fanned out like messily cracked eggs fumbling for the edges of the pan, legless… Read More ›

• The Sponge Factory diaries (Philadelphia, ’95)

  By Bill Pearse on February 10, 2017 • ( 17 )

  Perhaps Philadelphia got its edge from the fact that the mayor ordered the bombing of a house in a residential area in 1985, a house with children and potential convicts inside — or perhaps it was like a jealous younger… Read More ›

• The circular references in stairwells and turnstiles

  By Bill Pearse on February 9, 2017 • ( 9 )

  

  In the bath I wrote a poem comparing fruit to genitalia and in our den tried to relax but the record player’s so fussy it requires adjustment, like a harmony of adjustments between the settings for arm tension and anti-skating,… Read More ›

• “Equilibrium”

  By Bill Pearse on February 8, 2017 • ( 15 )

  

  The sky and sea met at a line on the horizon, the end of themselves, as defined by their meeting. There they became indistinct, what made them so resigned, combined with the other. And they gave themselves freely, that line… Read More ›

• First listen of the White Album

  By Bill Pearse on February 7, 2017 • ( 8 )

  

  I realized Loren had my copy of The Corrections I’d given him in the early 2000’s: he said it was that book that made him realize what kind of writing he does and does not like, and that one was… Read More ›

• The color of late afternoon, snow covered slopes

  By Bill Pearse on February 6, 2017 • ( 32 )

  

  When we found out the kids’ school was cancelled for snow I made them stay up with me until midnight (Dawn was gone), they both fell asleep on the sofa, we’d been out in the storm past 10 and the… Read More ›

• Someone called ‘The Necromancer’ is on the line, and they say it’s really important

  By Bill Pearse on February 6, 2017 • ( 22 )

  

  The smartphone moved with him from room to room as a torch in a dark and threatening castle, everything outside its light potentially harmful. And in public places where people otherwise had the chance to connect now they didn’t, they… Read More ›

• Sunday morning salutation

  By Bill Pearse on February 5, 2017 • ( 18 )

  When the sun rose you could hardly tell. A set of bats stirred from their perch, and were gone. The whole tree, made of bats. Some branches wagged and bobbed, didn’t say a word. The gray inaction, Sunday morning. Even… Read More ›