I went outside with John Coltrane, my portable speaker and a beer. Most of that good Irish cheese had gotten moldy but I ate around the bad parts. Mom sent an email photo of a tissue she blew blood into… Read More ›
Memoir
Looking out a window that isn’t there
We watched the days combine down. Grew more irritable with each other and felt some new edges to the quarantine. In that clinical way the help turns tables at large events or restaurants so I did with my family: no… Read More ›
Grace given over nostalgic fabrics
This shirt. This shirt I got at a second hand shop in Liverpool that’s rayon with blue flowers and rust-colored accents. Had it since ‘98. Like the beloved rayon shirt in college I buried my cat Sherman in, just because…. Read More ›
Connected to the land like a severed hand
Summer ran down. The mosquitoes had no need for me, my blood was bad. They sat on me with their proboscises out but couldn’t get it in. But the flies! Flies all over me, mistaken me for dead, for excrement…. Read More ›
Postcards from a distance, “wish you weren’t here”
There is a pervasive sense of loss in all this, a strange peace that could be a kind of acceptance or another form of dismay. The frame of our worlds collapsing down, retracting.
The meaning of existence can’t be supplied by religion or ideology
Last night’s wood fire still broods, it hangs in the air. I am made older by it, my inability to relate. And the desire to retreat inwards, down a path with no exit and no room to turn around.
Song for the downward slant
The moon plumps up, bugs thicken. We watch the swallows by the lake flitter like bats in the morning. How blue the sky, clouds provide texture. You can look up there and pretend it’s a moving picture or maybe the… Read More ›
Shadow plots
I rubbed the heels of my hands in my eyes and tilted my head back. Out here it is just the sound of birds, the neighbors never really out. The sound of a slow-moving jet, a passing car rippling out…. Read More ›
Low relief
Clear, starry nights with no moon, no pollution, and no time I need to get up. The Hawaiian shirt John gave me that’s missing a button right where my gut sticks out, but I wear it anyway. And that one… Read More ›
Mondays don’t matter
It is the best day ever! A Monday, full-on sun, and I’m not working yet. I smoked a five-pound pork shoulder on the bone and weeded, planted flowers, just poured a beer and it’s only 3.
Bill Pearse 