It took about a month for them to find his body and a whole lot longer than that for him to be discovered while he was alive. And he is there at the roadside jotting down notes by a flattened… Read More ›
prose
Chance meeting, Mr. Zhang
Today I met Mr. Zhang at the park. He passed us once then returned a second time and pulled up a seat. He was a non-person to me before he stopped, we got to know each other through words. I… Read More ›
When the sun came through my window
The backs of the butterfly wings caught fire and it was a deep-blooded copper glow when the sun came through my window, the backs, and it has come to represent so much more, the stained glass pane my mom and… Read More ›
From the throat, a crow’s hand
We are several hours away in the hills, the desert steppe, a friend’s cabin, down a dead end road that leads to a lake, a quarry, so quiet you can hear the gravel on the shoulder when we pull over… Read More ›
Prism of grocery store clerk impressions
The song Lunatic Fringe comes on overhead and the checker, who’s deep in her 50s, looks up and disappears for a moment to another time, smiles a secret smile to herself and goes off to another place, all her own…. Read More ›
Poet modeling: notes from the dentist’s waiting room
I walk the city in the morning as it’s waking up: shop owners sweeping the sidewalks after the storm, lights coming on in the apartment windows, a million lives to live in the red brick buildings overlooking the city, due… Read More ›
Shadow imprint of a soul: what’s timeless
Souls make snow-angels in the dog bed, where Ginger curls up by the fire. And after she’s gone, the mind still sees after-images of her there and has to check itself, for time: For what time we’re in, now? How it… Read More ›
Seeds spin like helicopters
We’re like seeds in the sky, how we start in the distance and might be a bat, a sparrow, a dragonfly, a seed We start from one corner and slip to the side, come back into focus, carry on a… Read More ›
Beach became sky
This morning the sky’s gutted and fanned out like the beach, the clouds ocean foam, the stars peaking out through the sand, surprised to find themselves with the left-behind junk of man and the creatures and the saltwater pods stirring… Read More ›
This life is a jacket we’ll take off soon
I pulled a Walt Whitman, tripping-out on my back in the grass, with ants crawling up my arms and neck, my ears full of birdsong and dogs barking, something flying by and stopping on my head, plastered to the earth… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 