By the time Led Zeppelin got to their seventh album Presence the band sounds tired. Still good, still Zeppelin, but starting to show signs of wear. How could they not? How many bands make seven perfect albums like that? Less… Read More ›
musings
The Last of the Whiskey
Maybe it was the sub-tropically rooted atmospheric river we’re under in western Washington that put me in a funk with all this rain, all this weeping and draining and sagging and uprooting that got me encased in a work-induced death… Read More ›
Pipe cleaners and cats prose
The tree limbs had the same shape as pipe cleaners, the pipe cleaners Dawn got at Michaels for some school project but the cat co-opted them, figured they were toys designed for her, batting them around on the wood floor… Read More ›
And now, this is what 8 o’clock feels like
In 1994, Bukowski died at 73. It’s hard to imagine we have so many days until we don’t. He said don’t die before you’re dead, hold your head under the water, play the violin. Plant tulips in the rain. But… Read More ›
Corpse pose, prose
When we came back from Germany last year I had May, June, July, August, and September off before I went back to work. And before that I had a year not working, starting just before Christmas. How fast the clouds… Read More ›
The intensely masculine act of cooking beef chili
I broke up the beef with the back of a wooden spoon until it was no longer pink and spread it with the fat and spices and aromatics into a weave and stood there in my apron, regarded myself, got… Read More ›
‘The chances were, they wouldn’t’
I sat at the bar watching golf. Behind me, three general contractors who swore a lot, talking about their jobs. I thought about saying something. I pictured how I’d do it. But after listening to them for a while, like… Read More ›
Building 37
I’ve now contracted at Microsoft for six months. Today for the first time I had a meeting in a different building. The buildings are numbered; I just had the number but didn’t bother to look up exactly where it was,… Read More ›
‘The first thing we’ll do is round up all the homosexuals’
My head in the hand sink in the morning under the cold water spigot and now, my chest hanging out in the manner of a woman’s, with the hormonal levels petering out, the muscle tissue gone soft. I did a… Read More ›
‘Where the shadows run from themselves’
I got back in the slot, the cafeteria salad bar at work, tonged some shredded carrots, spinach, diced beets…made a modest bird’s nest out of it, weighed it, scanned my card, picked a two-top by the windows and started in…. Read More ›
Bill Pearse 