Author Archives

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

• Song for late March, sung from a dog

  By Bill Pearse on March 25, 2019 • ( 6 )

  There was no way we could all live forever. My dog knew that by the way she looked at me when she folded back into a crease on the couch and smacked her lips; that was it right there, the… Read More ›

• No breaks (from a plane)

  By Bill Pearse on March 23, 2019 • ( 16 )

  There were times I felt like I had to write, I had the impulse, to save the moment. I thought I could just throw my arms out and surround it, I could throw my line in the water and bring… Read More ›

• Regret

  By Bill Pearse on March 12, 2019 • ( 9 )

  I imagined the house quiet, after they’d left. I could hear the memory of their voices as they were now, an echo. I could feel my heart pull in the way a hand contracts to a fist, the way a… Read More ›

• LGBTQIA, the new strong password

  By Bill Pearse on March 11, 2019 • ( 18 )

  I took Lily to her LGBTQIA support group for kids with mental and behavioral issues, dropped her in the lobby with her phone, then drove to Bellevue for a quiet drink. I sat at the bar with a shrimp cocktail,… Read More ›

• Down, down

  By Bill Pearse on March 5, 2019 • ( 12 )

  Down went the day, followed by the sun, the night, the moon which rose just a hair of itself, the kids, then us: the weights on the clock: everything goes down. They talk about the ascension, about what happens “after,”… Read More ›

• The turning back spot before coming down

  By Bill Pearse on March 3, 2019 • ( 1 )

  When the poem is done I let it take effect on me like a pill slid down my throat, waiting. And when at last you get to the top, when you’ve reached that place to stop and turn back, how… Read More ›

• Excavation of self, through rotten banana peels and skin

  By Bill Pearse on March 2, 2019 • ( 9 )

  At last the smell that was really me came to bare, to fully express itself, as a piece of rotten fruit or uneaten meat, table scraps left to bloom in some dark, neglected space. A smell, an essence, of toxins… Read More ›

• Weights

  By Bill Pearse on February 28, 2019 • ( 3 )

  At this time of day, this time of year, the butterfly glows gold in the window of our den it’s hung by chains, framed, with dust in the old border and cobwebs strung to the window’s edge the butterfly is… Read More ›

• Weltschmerz

  By Bill Pearse on February 27, 2019 • ( 10 )

  I have grown tired from too much poetry and these everyday ironies, have sunken inwards, as a spot in our lawn that’s slowly turned to a hole, now something we’re forced to address, the frost level come up, the remains… Read More ›

• Lisbeth Salander will have her reckoning

  By Bill Pearse on February 23, 2019 • ( 14 )

  The upsetting quality of the music I play. The look of my hair after several days without shampoo. The sense I should be outside but don’t feel like it, the look of the snow after it finally seeps into our… Read More ›