In 1872 Bo Diddley was sheriff, this little town down from the Santa Fe trail, and he came out of Miss Kitty's one night and caught old Chuck Berry robbing the bank, him and that English twitch junkie who stole all his licks in St. Louis.

Bo sees them, they're duckwalking out to the horses, and he pulls this big old hoss pistol, yells "Freeze!" and Berry goes into a roll and comes up with guns blazing and shoots old Bo's Stetson clean off his head, and Bo has to jump in the horse…

I don't know how long it'd been since I'd seen a panhandler on the side of the road but today it occurred to me that the streets were surprisingly empty on such a clear, blue sky, 58 AQI day.

The bus stopped at the light just behind of the Martin Luther King Jr Memorial bridge and on the column I noticed there was a nasty mural which showed people, starved and disheveled, imprisoned waiting for death and cremation.

In my mind's eye I could see all the panhandlers -- those too…

Rage chewed up the road, ingesting it like a long black twist of licorice. Its fast rubber ran hot over the cracked and torn skin of endless miles, boredom and road kill, the sameness fueling its discontent. Ahead, the beautiful raised scar of Blacktop stretched serenely, quietly listening to the unrelenting echoes of enterprise rolling like distant thunder. She felt its sudden weight upon her then, rough fingertips…

It's been six long, hard, grueling weeks, and yet you're still not home.

"It's just pneumonia" quickly spiraled into "why is her body so swollen", which led to "it's congestive heart failure." In the blink of an eye everything went downhill, and the sun and stars ceased to shine for you, as you now only glimpse them through the dirty windows of your sterile short-term room.

You're still here in body, but as the talk of "it's going to be awhile yet" to "she's not going back…

Rex lay on his side on the sun-warmed brick, tethered to the washing line. Wasn’t life good? he thought to himself, smiling happily with his long, pink lolling tongue hanging out. Yes, it was warm, a walk was imminent, and then there would be food, glorious food – lots of it.

The Enemy ambled by, her tail in the air swaying back and forth…

Mitchell knelt on the ground behind the tall grass surveying the area beyond while pondering life and wondering how his could have been different if those things, which were out of his control, had been different.  He thought of all those conflicting philosophical theories and scientific hypotheses coupled with religious beliefs and political ambitions from an historical perspective about various issues like did the flapping of a butterfly's wings really cause a hurricane to form on the…

We ride up in the company truck, an uncomfortable ride in the boxed-in cab, the empty cargo bay banging away, carrying only a toolbox and a bag of wigs. We have two stores to visit, one in Napa, the other in Sonoma and both include a change of clothing. Richard gets me started by having me undress the two women mannequins in the storefront’s main window but instructs me to leave their blouses on because he doesn’t want to…

As she walked through the kitchen door the heel of her favorite blue shoes slid on the red liquid beneath her.  She caught herself on the kitchen counter and swore as she felt the slim blue heel crumble and the nail on her left hand split.  It was certainly not her day, but then whose was it?

Sherry surveyed the damage and realized someone had been cooking again in her perfectly antiseptic white kitchen. This was her domain, her sanctuary and she expected perfection,…

The night was surreal. The path led past a decayed log, its innards burst open, glowing phosphorescent green like the guts of an alien. Lantern fireflies appeared sporadically in winks, their butts randomly blinking on and off like mini warning lights and above, trillions of stars spattered the black abyss. It was there in the woods that all of our childish fears collided, the deep density of the forest, the immensity of…

(An excerpt from a short story I started)

Noori passed today; he once was my best friend while growing up in a mostly Arab American community in Dearborn; you see, Noori was my next door neighbor and best friend for most all of our young defining years.…

I.

After the final curtain, Malpais, the liverish critic from the Morning Herald, sequestered himself in a Tribeca bar where he drank a pinot noir the color of garnets. From his coat pocket he drew a disheveled notebook in which he’d written his thoughts during the play. His handwriting in the darkened theater was, after many years of practice, indecipherable to anyone else – a precaution in case he…

Our manager, chipper lady always smiling and cracking jokes, pointed out the new girl who looked plain and uninteresting, "Moody ain't she? One of those 'it's the quiet ones you gotta watch' postal-worker types."

Over the next few months, she remained 'the quiet one' who worked diligently, often finishing assignments early, and always ate lunch alone - although, on occasion, she allowed me to sit with her - while reading some book on various world atrocities past and present, female…

I don’t recall much about the dentist from my childhood, only that his drill was constantly wheezing, his heavy needles ominous and painful and his consolation after the session: a ‘prize tray’ located in the reception area that featured a scrap heap of cheap dime store trinkets and things, fake coins, Jacks, plastic wands, marbles and the like. I half-expected to see mixed in there the teeth he had just pulled out of my…

In the dream I saw Joey Anchetta, old buddy long dead; we used to fly and wanted to think we were hawks.

As soon as I saw him I started to jones.

I asked him to hit me a lick and he told me no.

And then his eyes fell out of his head, leaving behind them a vast, frozen ocean of tears left unshed through a lifetime.

Then he was gone, the dream blinked to darkness, and now I stood in a room with three women: Linda grinning, her tongue a pink snake flicking out past…

Darkness orbs around us, moves about and behind us; now we kneel penitent, heads bowed, in the morning sun.  We pray for tender hands to transplant us into kinder shade, perhaps beneath eave or doorstep where shadows lean in the  afternoon. We hope for thimble drops of coolness on our lips, we await kind words to ease the guard we keep near vigilant stones, but none of these manifest.   We bear witness to seasons that no one else knows, where blood reds fade into the pinks of still-fresh…

“Helllloooooooooooo, bitches! 

“No, please, no, no, please, please, sit down, sit down, please sit down, bitches, ‘cause I gots some shit to say. 

(Pause) 

“You, girls---and I say 'girls', because that’s…

I am a guest in the home of friends who welcome me with so much love that I stay close to tears throughout my visit.

At night, I feel safe because several adults are preparing for bed nearby, a feeling I miss from my childhood. When I hear their footsteps one floor above, I become eight years old again, in bed, secure because my parents are managing the world around me.

Four sentry dogs…

It occurs to them simultaneously that they think their situation is funny and they toss themselves onto their backs, and like toddlers with their feet in the air, they wiggle their jeans and underwear off, propelling them onto scattered parts of the bed in a kind of Pollack inspired freeform toss.

Melanie lets her leg climb across Brad’s midsection, straddling him at about waist level, and he suddenly turns serious, having never felt a woman’s moisture on that part of his body…

The lady one floor above me had long conversations with guys tucked away in her teeth, the CIA spy boys or Pentagon gongos, or some kind of cloak-and-dagger megillahs that don't have a name but suck up whole budgets for wars that don't make the news until later.

They told her they're coming to take her away and put her in space, to a place called the planet Xarandax; part of the war against terror, they said, a good chunk of which is lightening the tax load at home…

She’s dressed all in midnight black, and man, I have to tell you, it really works. She’s perfectly shaped, like a Thunderbird wine glass. Of course, my favorite color is pink---tongues, lips, juicy etcetera, etcetera--- but I’m willing to overlook her slimming color choice.  Me? I’m on the Dunkin Donuts diet : no…