March came and so did the arborist, all of it on its sides sagging down: the trees and shrubs, the lawn, moss taking over but I like the moss, it leaves your outline after you lie in it. We hadn’t… Read More ›
Creative Nonfiction
Last Valentine’s Day, in Berlin
Last year on Valentine’s Day we left Berlin by train in the late morning, and though we had great weather our time there, that Sunday it was gray and wet (like how you’d picture Berlin in mid-February), but it made… Read More ›
A branch the size of an oar on a medieval slave ship
I worked a couple hours in the yard cleaning up branches and breaking down limbs clipping, sweeping, yanking out roots and pruning, stuff we probably should have done in the fall—then just got in the car and drove out to… Read More ›
The Sponge Factory diaries (Philadelphia, ’95)
Perhaps Philadelphia got its edge from the fact that the mayor ordered the bombing of a house in a residential area in 1985, a house with children and potential convicts inside — or perhaps it was like a jealous younger… 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 ›
A message for a Golem one morning
Clouds spun out in pillowy strands, like cotton candy. The frozen leaves on the rhododendrons collapsed in on themselves like umbrellas. They had a copy of The Corrections in the lending library on the dead end street so I nabbed… Read More ›
Ballad for a dying bird one Sunday
I cradled the near-dead bird in my palm, it was the size of a chicken egg and felt warm, I could feel it breathing, though it had its eyes closed like it was wincing, fanning the air with its feet,… Read More ›
The day we thought we died
It was the first time I started my morning ritual but then stopped and just went back to bed. I got the coffee going, fed the animals, but it was still dark outside so I lay in bed another 20… Read More ›
Meditation on a nameless day
Climbing mountains you get high enough you can see above the cloud deck, the tips of the other peaks coming through, how the clouds look like soup from above, and in every direction just the land stretching out, no cities—like… Read More ›
Sterling Hotel snapshot, 1992
I sat at the end of the bar with the bartender Robbie watching It’s A Wonderful Life, his favorite movie. It was snowing outside and the bar was basically closed. He wasn’t supposed to, but Robbie only charged me for… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 