Stories

I don’t need to consult a healer to feel the aura glowing around us.

I understood that life could end without warning, even young lives.

Order and gardens. Penelope liked things to grow just as they would.

How do wheels and wind-trash weave us into wakefulness?

As a shadow I arouse you will you believe the truth of my mouth.

I cradled the lifeless bird in my hand and marveled at its beauty.

It was enough to make the most hardened veteran drop his guard.

Not long after Christmas, the smoke really hit Melbourne.

“Jesus Christ,” Dad said, after the counselor spelled it out for him.

Put out to pasture, flop down into clover, alternate to the glue factory.

It is like the call of a voice the call of a voice that is not there.

I broke up fights, bandaged cuts, fielded calls from parents, and sat with the sad or depressed.

I have many dreams, I say. In my dreams I am better than myself.

A lawyer, senator, judge; laws are what he lives for. His left eye squints involuntarily.

On a jet stream, unearthly, air can travel at hundreds of miles per hour.

Here's a great way to tell the comedy of sex in only six words.

Joshua was well versed in things to which I was not yet privy, like sex.

I remember a field too long as the stem of a pear chosen in Upstate.

Fly through 13 billion years of history in this graphic story.

The woman who raised the woman who raised me was a mistress.

He’s gonna change the way we farm around here. Make it more like India.

Ostriches

Whether or not anyone corrected John’s hearing blip remains debated, but if any attempt was made, it was ignored.

The one who sold me a smuggled gun sold me smuggled bullets.

Our Bodies, Our Words

Thirty-eight years after its initial publication, the revised, updated Our Bodies, Ourselves sits in the front row of my double-stacked bookshelf. The reason for its lasting influence, I
believe, is . . .

Loss. That word echoed in my ears as my eyes ranged around the garden.

Our neighbors the Bells are watching, watching us when we play outside.

The rifle slams into my shoulder. Smoke pummels the air.