The plastic hummingbirds that glow at night seem a lifetime ago since I gave them to my mother-in-law and she hung them on a hook off her deck. There’s even a sense of fall in the air, that dry rattle… Read More ›
writing process
Richard Brautigan is dead at 49
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 ›
Pick me out a poem
After I ate the poet I left the shells piled high on a plate translucent-pink, done just right — and after all that picking out the meat, it looked like more than when I started, once it was done.
Say goodbye to the Hoh
The sea spills its guts out to anyone who will listen, just hurls itself up and forgets it’s told the same story before: two black heads in the water floating that could be humans staring at us but they are seals,… 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 ›
Assisted Living
The lake level has gone down now and there are kayakers and fishermen out early — the same lake I came to with my dog in the winter months with my German tapes on an iPod shuffle and my notepad,… Read More ›
Bill Pearse 