Standing at the great man’s door, I hesitated. I was intimidated—who wouldn’t be, faced with the prospect of interviewing a living legend, a reclusive one at that? Also, there was the question of my journalistic skills, depending as they did on one undergrad course. But Edith Anne, the kind editor at the Shawnee Springs News, had taken my measure…

My husband’s triple bypass surgery had gone well, and his recovery was uneventful, but ten days later, during the night he woke me up and told me he was having trouble breathing. After a sleepless night, I drove him to the emergency room, at 5 A.M. His newly patched heart checked out, but the doctors admitted him…

My wife, Jenny, and I were sitting with our friend, Stan, on the roof-top deck of the beach house she and I had rented in San Diego. We were there for a month to get out of the long, wet Seattle winter; Stan had just come down to visit for Presidents’ Day weekend

The autumn evening in The Hague is cooling as I lean my bicycle against the steel stairway and step into the brightly lit atelier. It’s tucked in the corner of a green-colored building on Noordeinde, at the bottom of the long street leading up to the Dutch king’s palace.

Elinor listened to the comforting sound of the car door latch sealing her in. Carpenter’s tools hung neatly arranged along the side wall, and shelves beside her held plastic bins marked “Robert’s Trophies.” His clay-clogged boots sat at the foot of the steps leading to the kitchen.

Judge Sullivan, although a young man and even more junior judge, had heard his share of difficult questions from lawyers but had never seen such a simple question prove so vexing.
“I am sorry, counsel,” he said, “but I must have misheard. Could you please repeat the question?”
“Of course, Your Honor.” David Terry cleared his throat and began again. “Mrs. Sarah Althea Sharon, where were you born?”

Who doesn’t have an insurance nowadays? Yet, how many people can say I know what I’m doing? Even for Dr. Chu, a rehab doctor with twenty-five years of clinical experience, insurance is still her blind spot. She isn’t alone…

I had wanted a dog. Preferably a small one, with a spot over its eye so I could’ve called it “Spot” without anyone questioning the name. Then, when I finally went to middle school in the fall, I’d have secured my place in the classroom. Now, though, I would settle for a dog that had no spots on it at all, as long as it was a dog. I looked down at the bag in my hand, the water-filled plastic straining with the weight of its contents, like Jimmy’s mom’s belly before she went to the hospital so she could have the baby that was growing inside her. Jimmy says he preferred her big belly because his brother cried too much, and I’d agreed with him, but that was before.

After Dave had ghosted Big Al’s throughout the five-day Seattle trip, Tino’s heavily garnished cover story of food poisoning from a frisée and radish salad with hazelnut dressing at his grandmother’s funeral was ignored, and he was promptly fired Monday morning.

Everything begins and ends in fire. That’s what Mrs. Green told me when I was eleven in her youth Bible study at the Aegolius Creek Community Church. God created the heavens and the earth from a great ball of flame. Which doesn’t seem much different than the Big Bang Theory, though Mrs. Green said it was blasphemous to suggest something other than God was responsible for creation.

Maybe everyone is just being nice because it’s my birthday, but I didn’t think it’d be possible for us to get to this point again.
“Goodnight. Don’t forget to unplug the lights,” my dad says, closing the gate of the fence.
“Okay, I just want to lie here for a minute,” I say, flopping back on the couch.

counting smoke plumes
on the mesa horizon
while yucca spire buds
remain un-blossomed.

Between rocks guarding
the front door, a sunflower
stalk bends. I welt too.
Yellow flames wake the air.

Two trees came down across the neighbor’s lawn last night
with the rain, kissing the gutters along the roof, knocking over
patio chairs, but everyone inside, just safe. We are uphill
from the flooding, where the beachfront parade of restaurants
were washed away

Having played aces at the poker table in one dark
Corner of the bar and been accused, drank
Sloe gin fizz then kissed the girls (the music was just great;
The women naked danced demurely on tabletops slimy at Jake’s Bar-n-Grill
Whose neon sign announced “This Place Will Make Your Ladder Climb”)

It’s not the end of the world, though it could be, but the sun
came up today and I’ve had my morning coffee, while, at the same time,
Yellowstone stood rain-smothered, the Midwest roiled in the midst of a heat wave,
and millions across India and Bangladesh lost everything to raging floods and landslides.

On a corner lot
nestled among two story homes
wooden swing sets
and paved driveways
stands a glass greenhouse.

The universe lurks
in the magic of the hours:
the evening sun slides behind
the ruins of an old stone house

and the cholla thicket, strewn
with the wreckage of windblown leavings—

The girl stood on top of the railing. I watched in wonder – how could the girl balance? Still, that was not the real question. The real question was if the girl would jump. The ocean rolled with winds from a far-off storm, and while someone could conceivably jump from the pier into the water and live, someone else with an intent to die could probably succeed.

The screen door slammed behind him. Ray watched through the smudged glass as Gordon stomped across the back porch and the patchy yard. The grass they had spent so much of the spring planting and watering had yet to reveal itself. Gordon disappeared inside the rust-colored barn seated at the lip of the yard.