Category Archives: prose

The Oxford comma

Posted on June 1, 2018 by

Dawn said there’s a cheaper treatment for lice, where you just put mayonnaise on your head and tie it off in a bag and then wait a couple hours, and they die from the oils. I learned about the Oxford … Continue reading →

Posted in parenting, prose, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 16 Comments

Lines (of longitude and latitude)

Posted on May 30, 2018 by

Though the tree is dead, it’s home to a lot of bugs, birds and bats, you can tell by the holes. It’s like the abandoned factory across the street from our apartment in Philadelphia that became home to the homeless, … Continue reading →

Posted in prose, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Wilhelm’s mausoleom

Posted on May 29, 2018 by

I stopped by the dry cleaners, then the car wash — vacuumed out the pollen, the cottonwood, pine needles and dandruff, the nail clippings and dirt, then gathered wood to make a fire later, shook off the spiders from the … Continue reading →

Posted in death, Memoir, musings, prose, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , | 18 Comments

The god of only children

Posted on May 28, 2018 by

For some reason when I’m in Portland I feel like I can be more myself, maybe because no one knows me here. I wake and walk down César Chávez to the Starbucks in the cool, marine air. And remember the … Continue reading →

Posted in death, prose, travel, writing | Tagged , , , , , , | 18 Comments

Gray of lake combined to sky, the same

Posted on May 20, 2018 by

Through the narrow path in the nearby park, a semi-circle that crowns my walk, the trees are leaning in and damp with dew. It’s late spring now, past peak, broken petals brought down by an overnight rain. I come to … Continue reading →

Posted in prose, writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

One Saturday in May, with ’77 million paintings’ playing

Posted on May 19, 2018 by

The cottonwood started falling and now it feels like we’re in a snow globe that won’t stop. Charlotte and I went to the aquarium and looked at the octopus, its sheep eyes, the valves where the cheeks would be, opening … Continue reading →

Posted in music, musings, prose | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 21 Comments

No soft shoulders

Posted on May 2, 2018 by

On my walk to the lake it was definitely May, with a thin film of fog and many colors beneath. The pink cherry blossom blooms thrown down like confetti — the robins and rabbits, all the sights and sounds of … Continue reading →

Posted in musings, prose | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments