I went back to Portland, and it was the same as it always was. We got behind the quadriplegic at the neighborhood wine take out and the clerk put her bottles on the back of her buggy in a basket… Read More ›
prose
Down stellar stream
The rain is hypnotic like the static on the black and white TV I used to fall asleep to growing up. It was my first digital-assisted relaxation, when the programming ended and the Star-Spangled Banner played, and then it all… Read More ›
Song for April, the draw down
How the sky draws down, this time of year, when it’s newly spring: there is no urgency to its ending, not like fall or winter: it is the start of the long days of haplessness, the spooling out of light,… Read More ›
Happiness is easy
Two weeks ago, we went to brunch at the local ale house and I tried to nap before going to the airport. In a moment of clarity, Lily deleted all the data on her phone and gave it to Charlotte,… Read More ›
Real time
Probably the most comforting thing I could do was drink in bed. When I quit drinking I wrote a list of all the things I pledged I wouldn’t do when I started drinking again and one of the top 3… Read More ›
No breaks (from a plane)
There were times I felt like I had to write, I had the impulse, to save the moment. I thought I could just throw my arms out and surround it, I could throw my line in the water and bring… Read More ›
Regret
I imagined the house quiet, after they’d left. I could hear the memory of their voices as they were now, an echo. I could feel my heart pull in the way a hand contracts to a fist, the way a… Read More ›
Down, down
Down went the day, followed by the sun, the night, the moon which rose just a hair of itself, the kids, then us: the weights on the clock: everything goes down. They talk about the ascension, about what happens “after,”… Read More ›
The turning back spot before coming down
When the poem is done I let it take effect on me like a pill slid down my throat, waiting. And when at last you get to the top, when you’ve reached that place to stop and turn back, how… Read More ›
Excavation of self, through rotten banana peels and skin
At last the smell that was really me came to bare, to fully express itself, as a piece of rotten fruit or uneaten meat, table scraps left to bloom in some dark, neglected space. A smell, an essence, of toxins… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 