Something is tapping the window so fine Man of Honor barely hears it, Probably just a twig.

The tapping stops but just as he relaxes enough to go back to sleep he hears it again and, focusing this time, hears a voice, barely audible but urgent and desperate, "Tante!"

Delicately slipping out of bed he checks the window then, seeing Claire's gone, heads for the front door hearing along the way tapping on his office window, tapping on the glass door in the kitchen,…

Sonya say the new girl bring her own music. I shit-can the idea right then and there. My club have three tings my customer want: the tits, the pussy and the tall cold ones. I tell Sonya to tell new girl she need only be concern with the first two. Leave music to me. I make sure she have no trouble dancing for me.

He loves reading to the marrow. Reading is his only obsession. Nothing you find in his hands, but books, and even his laptop is stuffed with loads of pdfs, and docs.  He asked himself, When will these books and all these reads lead me to write something, myself? The need for his writings to be read by an obsessed avid reader somewhere in this globe became an obsession. It even led him to drink only inky tea.

She kept peeling and waxing her skin, though it was very painful. Peeling her skin was but a piece of torture. Then she took a long hot bath. After drying up, she began plucking and refining her bushy eyebrows, like a farmer who toils to eradicate all evil weeds. And before wearing her makeup she gently slapped her face more than once to make her cheeks appear redder and redder. She really needed those hours of torture before the coming of midnight because she decided to be the rose; the…

Each time he goes to the desert he feels astounded by its depth and the clarity of its soft sands. He really loves that wilderness that reminds him of the first moments of birth. Whenever he is there, he seizes the opportunity to roam, wander and observe the tiniest details. Yesterday the wind was so boisterous that it had carved wrinkles in the soft sand dunes. Today he goes to the desert to check it after yesterday’s storm. He feels more astounded because he doesn’t believe that the soft…

She had an itch in the middle of her back. She found it difficult to scratch it easily. She was about to call her husband who was chilling in the living room to scratch it for her. But she remembered that proverb which says, “Only your own nail can scratch your skin.” So she tried to scratch her itchy back herself. But she remembered that she had clipped her nails two hours ago.

She was very happy when she touched the horse of her knight. She fed him the finest straw, and even almonds and nuts. She washed it carefully, and cuddled it with the utmost tenderness because it is the horse of her knight. She was very jubilant because she finally could touch the horse of the man of her dream. She even tried to ride it. But she couldn’t as it turned to be just a little wooden pony.

I always wear the black and white dress to baptisms and funerals.  It feels appropriate either way.  The dress is comfortable once I get it on, force three small buttons through slings behind my neck, like rounded black heads through too-small birth canals. 

While I'm concentrating on this intricate frustration I notice the small heart-shaped tin in my closet which is decorated with the same black and white scroll pattern on my dress.  Inside the tin is my six year old's…

I Floated Home

As for the trip back to our world: L'amea and I stood in that room, remembering the old days I told you about, and then it was as if we were sinking from some unknown sky back to Earth.

Or at least I was sinking: L'amea was gone and I was alone--and floating, descending over a downtown I'd known, and it must have been noon, thereabouts, on a weekday, with white collar workers dressed for the office flooding the sidewalks searching out…

Desperate for a sign, I close my eyes and listen to the lowered pulse of heaven. Childhood begins in a frantic magic, death ends in a painful, crawling calculus.  The lamp dims.  I’m disconnecting the dots.  If only this tale would end differently.  Why, I wonder, does the Genie never offer a 4th wish?

He cobbled shoes that old fellow and that’s all he did. He sat behind his cobbler’s counter and mended leather, imitation included. I saw him; every time I passed that plate glass window he was cobbling, and round the clock too. One time I entered his cobbler’s shop with a pair of old boots and asked if he could make them new again, and like a gumshoe with a spyglass he probed every inch, “Hmm, 1963,” he said, “Beatle Boots and full-grain leather. Are…

Teeny and me were playing Chutes and Ladders in her pink bedroom, but I left when she beat me for the third time and yelled “Winner winner, chicken dinner!”

I was walking home, down Robert E. Lee Street, when I saw Mr. Jimmy Big-Shot standing next to the corner store, smoking under the green awning, and I felt like ratting on him, except there was no one around…

for Adrienne Rich who passed away on March 27, 2012

Adrienne                           I love reading your poem “Diving into the Wreck.”

And as you know there is a place between the ground and the sky

where roses in full bloom just ascend the sky emanating the aroma of eternity—

it is the ether where great people just bathe combating the oblivion

and the dreadful death.          Adrienne your departure is not diving into the…

Now, with regard to the travel through time that we also engaged in and yes, I'm aware it's impossible, thank you--except in one fashion, and this is how that whole thing works:

L'amea and I knew, first of all, that going back to the present in our world was out; nothing was left but a toxic waste dump, with all life dying or dead, or mutating to something that might find its place in the chemical soup that remained.

We had to go back nonetheless, for reasons I'll get to, but…

She is the most skillful fortuneteller in the country because most of her prophecies come true. She just perspires, shivers and murmurs with inarticulate words while reading the face of the black coffee in the cup of her clients. Those are her usual rituals when doing her work. Yesterday she went to read the cup of the president. When she began reading the president’s cup, everything was alright. Suddenly in the apogee of her sweat, a fly came and drowned in the cup destroying everything.

My head ached last night. I sipped six cups of bitter coffee, one after another, and smoked a cigarette with each cup, but in vain. I sliced up six lemons and made six little glasses of lemonade, but in vain. I called six doctors for advice, but in vain. I swallowed six tablets, like a hungry addict for cannabis, but in vain. My mate was just watching me trying all those solutions and finally advised me to bury my head in six pillows in order to forget about this nasty migraine.

“Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes!” “Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes!” “Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes!” “Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes!” “Go to the kitchen and wash the dishes!” The dominant wife kept yelling at her husband till she lost her throat.

When it was time to come out of his stand, Marvin climbed down to see Frank waiting at the base of the tree, and when he bounced a little as his feet hit the ground, Frank said nothing.  Then, as Marvin turned toward the path, Frank pulled him hard by the forearm, and Marvin said nothing, either, and he found he could not look into Frank’s eyes.

As Frank pulled him closer, Marvin felt himself rushing forward without moving his feet, and when he got close enough to see Frank’s torso…

At Harry’s suggestion I restacked these in order for those that did not read The Homecoming first.

The Homecoming

The phone rang four times, but no one answered. The grandfather’s clock bonged and played Westminster’s, which no one heard.

A faithful spotted dog sat by his side licking the last few drops of blood that oozed from his master’s body just before the flicker of life left his…

Like a shiny coin lying in the dirt, a fine powder of dust the only thing dimming its newness.

Like a fragile newborn anything.

Like the promise of future sex or the smell of dinner cooking or the hump-day hope for a weekend of rest or fun.

Like a pregnancy or a hot air balloon ride.

Like waking up slowly and realizing that not only is the warmth beside you someone you completely adore but that it has snowed overnight and you don't have to go to work and that you…