My grandfather has fallen asleep with a paperback in his lap, hands braided, glasses on — and I watch his reflection from the bathroom mirror where someone has left a stick of deodorant by the sink that says Sure, and I am… Read More ›
Memoir
Postcard from Division Street, 92
We had all just graduated college — at least I had, Dave had a couple more credits to go but said screw it, he’d get it another time — and Chris was pretty much self-educated on heady books and foreign… Read More ›
A thumbnail of a person
The playground is empty though it’s the middle of the day, the middle of the summer, with laminated signs on stakes warning the slides are very hot from the sun. It’s like the heat made everyone disappear, until two teenaged… Read More ›
You’ve got to earn the right to be wrong
The woman in the pizza shop carries her kid on her hip like it’s some growth, a Mini-Me, an evil puppet you can’t control that just talks like that and won’t stop. Because I’m not employed and my wife is over-worked and we’re… Read More ›
Soft shoulders
I’d had them for a long time, but hadn’t worn them in a long time, the Vietnamese fishermen pants I used for Yoga in the studio at my gym at work, standing on my head with a wife beater, I… Read More ›
The Safeway in Chewelah, WA
On the drive back I make my kids listen to Townes Van Zandt since it feels like we could be in Texas it’s so hot, everything flat and beaten down by the sun. The songs about places he’d been in… Read More ›
Right through the indulgent parts
I get behind a guy in the Costco parking lot who’s got a buck with gnarled antlers next to a sticker of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes peeing on the name Obama, and next to that, it’s a take-off on… Read More ›
Full moon over the swale
Brad’s friend Jim reminds me of a scarecrow that’s missing the stuffing around his waist he’s so thin, it makes his pants ride low, that’s the first thing you notice. The kids have gorged themselves on cheese puffs like the… Read More ›
Stuck inside a hummingbird mobile with the Memphis blues again
We drove around with five fluorescent lamp bulbs in the back of the Volvo and one of the two mufflers missing with the second one scraping the pavement and hanging there wrong like a bad organ, something that needs removed… Read More ›
The man who caved in on himself
Five years ago we hired our neighbor to renovate our bathroom — redo the shower, tile the bathtub. It took longer than it should when you try to get a good deal and at the end of it, he said… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 