Author Archives

Unknown's avatar

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

  • Going Back to Hell (4)

    By on • ( 3 )

    Sunday morning in Las Vegas, day four of seven. The only people out this early are the runners and the homeless, waking up on the sidewalk as the sun cuts through the gaps between the hotels. Friday night: a midget… Read More ›

  • Going Back to Hell (3)

    By on • ( 3 )

    Poets have no business in Las Vegas unless they’re here to write horror stories, or die a drunken, messy death. I don’t gamble, don’t like musicals, don’t like paying a lot for dinner, and I’m married. So I’m holing up… Read More ›

  • Going Back to Hell (2)

    By on • ( 2 )

    The plane pivots on its wheels, on the runway, like a cannon butt pointing south. At once we are in the air, lifted, and the sun makes a shadow of our plane on the clouds, a cartoon-plane, and the sun… Read More ›

  • Killing Time, Making Time, Wasting Time

    By on • ( 2 )

    I don’t know what it’s “about.” That’s what people want to know when you say you’ve written something, that’s the first question. Is it published, what’s it about? I don’t make time for a pipeline, for blog posts. I spin… Read More ›

  • Going Back to Hell (1)

    By on • ( 4 )

    The sales guy wears his sunglasses on the back of his head when he’s not wearing them on his face. He’s got product in his hair, tanned year-round, upper 40s, looks better than me. Doesn’t work as hard. He rides… Read More ›

  • Drug Friend

    By on • ( 2 )

    Peel held his arm out to me like a piece of meat, like it wasn’t his, like it was something he found. He looked to me for a reaction at what I saw: the spots along his veins, scarred over,… Read More ›

  • Quality, Popularity

    By on • ( 2 )

    These two don’t always go together. Businesses that grow from a quality product struggle to maintain it once they get big; they pay consultants to help them remember what it was like to be small. Morrissey said, “Fame, fame, fatal… Read More ›

  • Before there was a name for it

    By on • ( 5 )

    I didn’t know the name for it: 14 years old, spring, going out with a girl on a date, getting a ride to the movies. Innocent love, before it gets complicated with sex. Crawling all over each other with our… Read More ›

  • The Hyphen

    By on • ( 10 )

    Getting pissed off about punctuation feels petty; it’s often something more. I’m having a brochure produced for a real estate convention in Las Vegas, and we’ve gone back and forth with about 10 approval cycles in the past four weeks…. Read More ›

  • The Service Elevator

    By on • ( 3 )

    I work in a 10-story, 100 year-old office building south of downtown Seattle. Normally, I take the stairs or ride the elevators. This past week, I’ve been using a service elevator to get down to the loading dock. There’s a… Read More ›