Author Archives
Bill Pearse publishes memoir, travel journals, poetry and prose, and lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Connected to the land like a severed hand
Summer ran down. The mosquitoes had no need for me, my blood was bad. They sat on me with their proboscises out but couldn’t get it in. But the flies! Flies all over me, mistaken me for dead, for excrement…. Read More ›
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That feel
I sat waiting for it with my eyes closed. I heard the music from upstairs mix with the sounds of my own music. I chewed the ends of my mustache and saw the pattern of grass and how it looked… Read More ›
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Postcards from a distance, “wish you weren’t here”
There is a pervasive sense of loss in all this, a strange peace that could be a kind of acceptance or another form of dismay. The frame of our worlds collapsing down, retracting.
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Terror twilight
The bobcat in our yard must have disrupted the balance because everyone was talking about it from the crows to the neighbor dogs to the lesser birds and bats. They were all peeping and cheeping and the crows, with that… Read More ›
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Face ID
The reflection throws back a version of myself that’s real but see-through The gray light of day. The pattern of squares across my window pane. The sound of a record from another time projecting me backwards and setting me down… Read More ›
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The meaning of existence can’t be supplied by religion or ideology
Last night’s wood fire still broods, it hangs in the air. I am made older by it, my inability to relate. And the desire to retreat inwards, down a path with no exit and no room to turn around.
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Song for the downward slant
The moon plumps up, bugs thicken. We watch the swallows by the lake flitter like bats in the morning. How blue the sky, clouds provide texture. You can look up there and pretend it’s a moving picture or maybe the… Read More ›
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Shadow plots
I rubbed the heels of my hands in my eyes and tilted my head back. Out here it is just the sound of birds, the neighbors never really out. The sound of a slow-moving jet, a passing car rippling out…. Read More ›
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Low relief
Clear, starry nights with no moon, no pollution, and no time I need to get up. The Hawaiian shirt John gave me that’s missing a button right where my gut sticks out, but I wear it anyway. And that one… Read More ›
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Mondays don’t matter
It is the best day ever! A Monday, full-on sun, and I’m not working yet. I smoked a five-pound pork shoulder on the bone and weeded, planted flowers, just poured a beer and it’s only 3.
Bill Pearse 