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 ›
parenting
We dropped the flyer for the middle school orchestra concert between the bleachers and left the chicken on the refrigerator
I got so mad at the chicken I roasted I couldn’t even eat it. I started working on it at 2 PM but it wasn’t ready, and out of the oven, until just after 6, right when Lily needed to… Read More ›
Lightning strikes
The work ethic was strong in me then, like the Force. It was a Monday for our checkup on Dawn’s pregnancy. I decided not to go into work, to make breakfast and enjoy time with just the two of us,… 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 ›
Every day I can I’m going to write
We drove to Fremont, a neighborhood my kids have never seen that’s in Seattle and just 35 minutes from our house, and when we got there and saw the stone troll under the bridge, the tourists pulling over taking selfies,… Read More ›
The scene with my grandfather in a dream
In my dream my grandfather was there and I thought this is the last time I will see my grandfather and then he was gone flickering between a photo and a living, breathing grandfather and in the street a wake… Read More ›
The circular references in stairwells and turnstiles
In the bath I wrote a poem comparing fruit to genitalia and in our den tried to relax but the record player’s so fussy it requires adjustment, like a harmony of adjustments between the settings for arm tension and anti-skating,… Read More ›
First listen of the White Album
I realized Loren had my copy of The Corrections I’d given him in the early 2000’s: he said it was that book that made him realize what kind of writing he does and does not like, and that one was… Read More ›
The color of late afternoon, snow covered slopes
When we found out the kids’ school was cancelled for snow I made them stay up with me until midnight (Dawn was gone), they both fell asleep on the sofa, we’d been out in the storm past 10 and the… Read More ›
More posts about baths, please
How impossibly dark it gets here in the afternoons sometimes. I lay in the bath with the pork roast brining and thought about the father-daughter Valentine’s dance at the community center, the one coming up that Charlotte seems so excited… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 