I gave up looking for Emmett’s body down by the creek and climbed back up the hill to the house. I checked my face for damage from the fall, and had a cut by my eye where my glasses broke…. Read More ›
Memoir
The J. Collis Browne Mixture
John summoned the J. Collis Browne Mixture for my upset stomach. The expiration on it was 1993, and it was banned from the U.S. for its opiate contents. The mixture was beige and tasteless but I was desperate, having poisoned… Read More ›
Spirit Dog and Screw Face
Ben was a Golden who lived on a farm down the road. We called him Spirit Dog because he had to cross the highway to get to our house, and never got hit. Emmet was a mutt who got abandoned… Read More ›
What’s worth than birth
Today’s my day, 1970: born across the street from the Allentown Fair while my dad was having a hamburger and my mom labored. They were 21, met in the laundromat, my mom folding my dad’s laundry. Married two months later,… Read More ›
What’s worse than being bad
Is not trying. Sitting still. Choosing fear over failure. Being untrue, it goes on and on. Instead, take the time to do the work and find the pleasure in the simple act of writing, the music of the keys as… Read More ›
Real Time
I love my digital music collection, but going through it is like going through a closet that’s over-stuffed, looking for the perfect thing but just winding up feeling frustrated about all the possibilities, none of them quite working out long… Read More ›
My Life Isn’t As Bad As Theirs, But I Dream That It Could Be
This is the attitude that brought me to Joy Division, living in Erie, Pennsylvania in 1988 and suffering through my first autumn away from home. The desperation in the music brought me up somehow. It put us in a trance,… Read More ›
Lehigh Street
The last time we were home for Easter, I drove by the apartment where I grew up, on Lehigh Street. We lived there for 12 years, in a two bedroom apartment with the washer and dryer right there in the… Read More ›
Paperboy
Is the paperboy dead? Here is one part of my life which is being carried out to sea by history. In the early 80s, I made a couple thousand dollars delivering newspapers. It taught me to set my alarm, be… Read More ›
The Smith Corona
I’ve been writing for 25 years now – “writing,” meaning more than just checks or grocery lists. When you say you’re a writer though, it implies you get paid to do it, or that you’ve been published. It’s easy to… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 