Author Archives

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

• Say goodbye to the Hoh

  By Bill Pearse on July 15, 2015 • ( 8 )

  

  The sea spills its guts out to anyone who will listen, just hurls itself up and forgets it’s told the same story before: two black heads in the water floating that could be humans staring at us but they are seals,… Read More ›

• What gets caught in the drain traps

  By Bill Pearse on July 11, 2015 • ( 8 )

  It was really time we cleaned the drain out in the bathtub with it slowing down every day, the hope it would just sort itself out and we wouldn’t have to deal with it, the not-altogether-clean water pooling down there,… Read More ›

• Sure

  By Bill Pearse on July 10, 2015 • ( 15 )

  My grandfather has fallen asleep with a paperback in his lap, hands braided, glasses on — and I watch his reflection from the bathroom mirror where someone has left a stick of deodorant by the sink that says Sure, and I am… Read More ›

• Postcard from Division Street, 92

  By Bill Pearse on July 9, 2015 • ( 17 )

  

  We had all just graduated college — at least I had, Dave had a couple more credits to go but said screw it, he’d get it another time — and Chris was pretty much self-educated on heady books and foreign… Read More ›

• A thumbnail of a person

  By Bill Pearse on July 8, 2015 • ( 8 )

  

  The playground is empty though it’s the middle of the day, the middle of the summer, with laminated signs on stakes warning the slides are very hot from the sun. It’s like the heat made everyone disappear, until two teenaged… Read More ›

• You’ve got to earn the right to be wrong

  By Bill Pearse on July 7, 2015 • ( 17 )

  

  The woman in the pizza shop carries her kid on her hip like it’s some growth, a Mini-Me, an evil puppet you can’t control that just talks like that and won’t stop. Because I’m not employed and my wife is over-worked and we’re… Read More ›

• Songs of innocence

  By Bill Pearse on July 6, 2015 • ( 2 )

  

  Originally posted on WHAT THE HELL:
  Over the weekend I read a few articles about the Grateful Dead. I guess they’ve finally called it quits or something. I was never a big Deadhead, and even when I give the old…

• Soft shoulders

  By Bill Pearse on July 6, 2015 • ( 16 )

  I’d had them for a long time, but hadn’t worn them in a long time, the Vietnamese fishermen pants I used for Yoga in the studio at my gym at work, standing on my head with a wife beater, I… Read More ›

• The Safeway in Chewelah, WA

  By Bill Pearse on July 5, 2015 • ( 10 )

  On the drive back I make my kids listen to Townes Van Zandt since it feels like we could be in Texas it’s so hot, everything flat and beaten down by the sun. The songs about places he’d been in… Read More ›

• Right through the indulgent parts

  By Bill Pearse on July 4, 2015 • ( 10 )

  I get behind a guy in the Costco parking lot who’s got a buck with gnarled antlers next to a sticker of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes peeing on the name Obama, and next to that, it’s a take-off on… Read More ›