Lily and her friends have formed a band called Your Mom’s Ashes, but spell it in a way that bastardizes the your and ignores the possessive for the mom’s. The four of them circle our property looking creatively blocked, needing… Read More ›
Halloween
‘Wax and wane’
By the time we got to the end of October I was done with it. The Halloween decals on the windows, the witches and skulls…it seemed to go on forever, like it should have been over by now. The skeleton… Read More ›
The same deep water as you
We went back to the old elementary school, Charlotte’s last year, for the annual Halloween bash. Dawn and I stood in the playground feeling tired and out of sorts, trying to make out the identities of kids running by as… Read More ›
More animal
Pouring boiling water down the sink drain to kill the fruit flies. The look of them in the dark as it spills through, this everyday violence. Remembering what my arm looked like when I cut it as a 5-year-old, running… Read More ›
The Famous Golden Larch
I don’t know what it is about me and hats, but I keep losing mine. There was the green Irish cap I got in a small, West Cork town: I wrote the name inside the rim (SKIBBEREEN 12-15) to mark… Read More ›
The first square
It was a strange night. Lily dressed up like Audrey Hepburn, with the gloves and the dress and the pearls, a cigarette holder, and Dawn put her hair up in a bun—and while I was at work I realized she’d… Read More ›
A bad ear
Happy Halloween from pinklightsabre.com, and thanks for reading! Thanks to Kevin Brennan at WHAT THE HELL and Indie-Scribable for the mask inspiration. Bill This post provisionally titled, “The Very Strange Way In Which Life Leads You Down A Corridor To… Read More ›
On the dead
Every other Saturday the gardeners come, but I will never know all their names. They are in the back now blowing out leaves, tearing out the dead, raking up beds, making it all go away— But the next morning the… Read More ›
The blood in my dad’s beard
The blood in my dad’s beard hardly looked real, more red-orange than ruddy, almost clown-like, but terrifying when he stretched his neck tendons and tightened his jaw, his eyes rolling like an animal in distress to show a lot of… Read More ›
Trick-or-treating in the Scottish Highlands
The first thing you need to know about trick-or-treating in Scotland is it’s not called trick-or-treating, it’s called guising. And you don’t get it for free just by waving your bags out, you have to sing a tune or recite… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 