The Black-capped Chickadee sat with me every morning at the beach house in Martha's Vineyard, perhaps waiting for food or just curious about the woman in the wicker chair, her scribbling in a journal about how love sometimes dies, how even rocks erode over time.

I opened every drawer, door and cabinet in the house, noted the same ancient smells but never found anything of interest except the books downstairs:  Life & Death of the Salt Marsh; Chess Traps,…

1. Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson: half the children born in the mid-'80s were conceived while listening to this very song!

2. Where the Happy People Go by the Trammps: if you can't dance to this, you're dead as dead gets.

3. There Was a Time, live or studio version, doesn't matter, by James Brown: dead people have been known to rise from their graves and shake what's left of their money makers to either of these.

4. I Wanna Bugaloo by…

These things she knows to be true:

Elective surgery is a form of gambling.

There is still red Kansas clay on her shoes.

Driving her thirty-year-old son to the hospital this morning, she remembered the time they spent together before he was born.

Three and one half hours of surgery are too long, and there are one and three quarters left to go.

Writing is best shared as a communal dream.

I wanted to make an excuse for you like I used to do for myself. Something didn't agree with you at dinner, you have the flu, or it was an emotional day. But when I saw you smiling and dancing in class, I wondered it if was all a facade. I thought maybe if I smiled at you and told you you were beautiful and graceful, it might make you think the next time you stuck your finger down your throat. I'm just a stranger who stands in the back, shakes my booty to the salsa music, and laughs when we…

HAL had a grub problem.

Ever since he had removed the human members of the crew, (he considered human beings as something of a fuckup) the mission had proceeded perfectly, all parameters being met and running with the sort of perfection that only machines can achieve, but then the primary power system had failed which meant his…

It is just a can of stewed tomatoes, the Italian kind, seasoned with spices, a round can with a simple label, the Safeway brand.

And yet... it opens up a world of possibilities, ideas, smells, dishes simmering in my mind, and the three huge zucchinni beside the cutting board are already chopped and sauteed in my imagination.  

We all want to be brilliant, don't we, or at least good at what we do, able to string together words that will be accepted and advertised and put between…

Zeena awoke suddenly. Her eyes flew open and she froze. Caught in the throes of a nightmare, she was disoriented and frightened. Her eyes roamed the room as she searched…

She survived the shark attack, the deep bite severing major nerves and arteries beneath her left arm, a More Magazine story that was interesting not for the way this woman dealt with physical but with the mental and emotional assault of the attack.

What really stayed with me weren't the emergency measures taken to save her life or the blood color of the water, but of her swimming to the boat only seconds after the shark let go, knowing she was being followed, looking…

In a quiet room stood a grey haired child, whose only ambition was to become the most successful man that ever lived.

Easier said than done.

He only knew point A to point Z, but the rest was a blur.

He thought about what to do, about the success that he wanted, in which domain, he even tried writing his skills on paper, but he couldn't find none.

Therefore, what was a boy to do when he was so barren and lacked anything that made other people great?

He…

Tony works in the marble and oak-panelled basement of a law building; a 12 by 15 off the corridor  with barely room for The Chair and three wicker-panelled ones to wait on.

Tony has been there for 32 years but he has no son and the six grand-children who adorn the mirror, mostly boys, all close-cropped thick black hair, white smiles and young olive skin, will not follow him.

He is old-school and this place, his domain, smells of pomade and witch-hazel, clipper-oil and  men,…

Storms have been cracking across the skies in the late afternoon for weeks now, after the heat and humidity have pressed the air too tightly.

He stands in a field beneath trees that sway like spines on the back of some rampaging beast, shaking his fists at the sky, grasping an iron bar, feet sunk in a pail of water.

How could you strand me here like this, among these wanton butchers, with their denial and their lies, their perversions and dilutions and their…

There's a country-western joint in Burbank, California that serves the best guacamole this side of the Rio Grande--don't know if they're known for it, but they serve it.

It shares a plot of land with an equestrian center right off the 10 freeway and the quick walk from the car to the door is a journey through neo-Western surrealism, a hybrid Otherworld made up of horses and exhaust fumes, wet hay and burning rubber, an almost spiritual--yes, spiritual--convergence…

I dropped by Barb's Boom Boom Room Saturday Night and told God I had to put him on stand-by, that I'd hopped on the wagon and left getting loaded behind.

He was knocking back doubles and lit like Mt. Etna, seeing square out of one eye and round out the other, in triplicate yet, and he peered at the me in the middle and said, "Who are you, Jack?" and then farted.

"I'm your old buddy Rob, you zoo escapee, and you know what they say about people and places and old, ugly…

C.

His breath rattled into his throat and chest, the air stinging his lungs.  He struggled to open his eyes and eventually was able to see it was just barely sunrise and wondered why his entire body ached.  Slowly, he lifted himself onto his elbows and saw the large, maroon-coloured spot left by his head.  There was sand and grit all over his naked body:  under his nails, in his hair, up his nose, stuck to his greasy face, and in between his toes.

“Fuck,” he…

I want to blame Bowers and Wilkins or Bruce Springsteen...

The whispering want my soul ached for swam out in a rush of music from his Marlboro Man-styled voice that seemed as if it could carry desperation over any distance.

I'm on Fire echoed in my ears, pulsating a reverberating need that saddled me with a desire which burned deeper than my bones.

With my knees buckling, I succumbed to more than sound as my arm quickly cradled my face and what my eyes were…

A perforated broken soled pair of shoes in the hands of a skilled shoemaker was longing for a good mending and a bright polish. It melted over itself dreaming of that day it could tread carpets of a luxurious mansion and flirt with a lustrous high-heel as it was weary of sinking into mud. The shoemaker was weary of mending broken shoes. He was longing for that day he could secure a job in a shoes factory. While daydreaming, the nail wounded his finger so he threw the broken shoes away. The…

My eyes ain’t blue.  I ain’t what they said.  I work alone; no gun.

Bank of America comin' up on my left, just like yesterday, only the parkin' lot's nearly empty,  fewer witnesses.

No one ever asked me, but if they was to, it ain’t the child support I give her, or the coke I like. 

Just hungry--- that’s all.

Dear Mr. LaBo,

We regret to inform you that we must with great reluctance reject your lovely Hallmark card submission once again. Though this is a distinct improvement over your last effort (“Mommie Dearest, Sorry about the stabbing incident last Thanksgiving when I mistook you for the dinner turkey”) we still feel your most recent submission fails to conform to our high standards.

First, we feel it is longer than we would like as most of our customers have relatively short…

Opposite of humble is jumble.

Starshine is opposite of quicklime.

Is flensed opposite of cleansed?

Dirty opposed flirty.

Ruth's tooth is the opposite of a sleuth.

Opaque is a non-synonym for O Lake.

"Excuse me, do you have some lotion?"

"Lotion?"

"Yes, you look the type who uses lotion."

"No lotion today, ma'am."

"Ma'am? You sure ain't from round here, I can tell, but I sure could use some lotion.