Short Stories from a book titled ‘One time’

Featured
2 AM Call

Are you sleeping with my wife?” Trying to stay mellow, I replied, Nope, I don’t think so. She roars back, “Oh you don’t THINK so?!? Where do you live? Where do you work? You’re fucking sleeping with my wife, just tell me. . . .”

A Tale of Two Kitties
A Tale of Two Kitties

Her markings are striking, pure black lines painted onto a fine sable coat, wet glossy ink drawn in patterns of perfect symmetry. She’s marked with the crisp, exact arcs and zigzags of the deepest jungle creatures, the jaguar, the leopard,  the serval.  The lined eyes of Egyptian funerary artists grace her features,  the flow of perfect stripes moves over the crown and down her neck, the fearful geometry of the tiger ripples down her front legs. 

Three Dreams of Premonition
Three Dreams of Premonition

The piles of mail cascade like scales on a snake, like crests on the rapids, like dunes across my long-neglected desk.  I can’t deal.  The envelopes are silent, they arrive, they gather. They may be shouting on the inside, but if I don’t open them, I’ll never need to know.

The Lucky Pearl of Mirth
The Lucky Pearl of Mirth

When fear comes nestled right up next to safety, both arriving in almost the same moment, the juxtaposition is so instant and alarming that you yell, curse, and laugh. The laughter is called nervous laughter, but I think it’s deeper than just the butterflies - your entire nervous system has been shocked while you still stand secure, and laughter uncoils the spring that instantly wound tight, ready to fight or flee for life.
Turk's Cap Fireball

So we were really swinging into this song about holy redemption, holding the high notes on “like meeeeee,” when a flash of light burst in the center of the circle — the music stopped and we all looked around with huge startled eyes, and then everyone was staring at me. Wisps of smoke were rising from my left shirt pocket.

The Starlet on the Tarmac
The Starlet on the Tarmac

I looked up just in time to see her whisper-yell “Down with the patriarchy!” with a raised first and swinging breasts. Her smile was radiant, her eyes were fierce, she’d read one too many tome of the canon. The dead white males had piled too high, the switch had flipped right then and there on that night and she was ready to burn it down with ebullience and glee.

Essays From a book titled ‘Axial Tilt’

Featured
Late Summer Warfare
Late Summer Warfare

The Beetles of Japan have orgied themselves, while gorging, in an iridescent sex-food holocaust that has left only laces where there should be leaves. Their numbers are so vast there is nothing to be done - pick them, drown them, bag in them in rotting sacs that reek like corpse. They ate the garden again, and so did the slugs, it is wartime in the dream of eden.

Stick Season
Stick Season

It is a willful act to not be repulsed and irritated by the withdrawal of splendor. It was easy to be cradled by summer, sung to while the insects hummed and flowers unfurled in symphonies of color, buoyed high in a sensual embrace weaving in from the horizon’s rich line. The absence of obvious delight angers our spoiled system.
A Proper Spring

All of the glistening, wet, forgotten things are put away in their proper places, and then, finally, it’s time to sort through the garage to find the rake. We comb the grasses and break the seal of the soil to let the sun and air in, uncovering spots that had been made dead with fallen leaves. Raking is a vigorous rubdown after the long, tight squeeze of winter, like scrubbing a newborn foal with a handful of hay, or a mother’s rough tongue.
The Winter That Wasn't

We come from reticent, stony, struggle-loving stock, and this is an indulgence that cannot be mentioned — there is remarkably little talk about the green grass where there should be snow. Ayup, crazy weather. Five months without long johns, boots without socks, the hat hasn’t seen action for weeks, and our entire system of survival lays dormant in the closet. We look at each other and shrug, wondering what will become us of now, fearful of too much luxury.

Essays from a Book Titled ‘Neptune’s Boot’

Featured
Sudden Death: Wayfinding through Grief
Sudden Death: Wayfinding through Grief

Shock is your friend, it wraps around you in heavy layers, a shawl woven for protection, a thick, supple insulating layer that holds you tight in its embrace. It is here to build up the boundary walls that comprehension will slowly, slowly sink through. This is the wise pacing of shock, it allows a measured integration of news that cannot be held. 

Suddenly Sick Kitty
Suddenly Sick Kitty

She trots back with her stunned dangling prey, to the porch if we are sitting there, or into the house if that’s where we are, and performs the act of eating the still-living rodent, crunching into the skull like a piece of candy, a sound we can hear all too clearly. From the underground tunnels and soft meadows straight into the jaws of death, it was a swift, precise transition between worlds.

Confluence I
Confluence I

The navel of the North American continent, like a bowl between two rising edges, every drop that falls from the sky rolls towards the center, streams to creeks to rivers — from the wide curve of rising lands, all water pours inward in two massive channels to carry it, the Missouri River and the Mississippi. You would think that the spot where these channels meet and merge would be a lively, jumping, rumbling piece of land. I expected the ground to shake with the collision.

Confluence II
Confluence II

I could feel and hear and see the hydrodynamics at work here in front of me as the two continental flows met and reconfigured their calculus. One river was moving faster than the other. The shore line is always a drag on momentum, so this river in front of me was snagging itself on two different speeds deep below, and delivering up to the surface a great release of tension.

Confluence VII
Confluence VII

The bushes rattled with grasshoppers alarmed by my walk, the birds of the marshland were calling and flying, and I got my toes and hands into that cool silken mud, that sticky with clay jet black silt from the ashes of life. Soft and deep like a pudding, millions of the smallest particles of earth, just a few elemental atoms bonded with clasped hands layered together like a gossamer mud

Essays from two books: ‘Written While Bleeding’ and

‘Five by Fifty’

Featured
The Dick Quotient: The Phallic-Shaped Exponent That Distorts Our World
The Dick Quotient: The Phallic-Shaped Exponent That Distorts Our World

The Dick Quotient works like this:  

Dick does half the job, it looks complete.  

Dick completes a shoddy job,  it looks superlative. 

Dick says something stupid, it sounds brilliant.  

Dick says something patently untrue, clearly he knows what he is talking about. 

Read More →
Pre-Flow 
Pre-Flow 

There has been a dilation in the senses and the world is streaming in. There’s a wobble, an extra charge in the system, a surplus of sensation. More data, more feelings, depth in every direction, and this overload of power needs a clear path to move through. It’s on a mission, and it’s pissed.

Read More →
Egg Dropping Lunacy
Egg Dropping Lunacy

Those eggs pop out of ripening follicles with military time, left, right, left, right, ovary, ovary. Not enough food, too bad, here it comes. The stress of moving or traveling seems to encourage the little things, so does tragedy and loss. The cycle of human fertility has no decency, periods show up even in the worst possible moments. In fact, you can count on it.

Read More →
One Way To Go Grey
One Way To Go Grey

Instead of luminous, silvery strands framing my face, I got limp hay the color of mouse turds. My deep chestnut hair, which used to light up with copper bolts in the sunshine, has turned to dirty dishwater. My hair hasn’t turned grey, or white, or pewter, it’s been drained of color. Remember those cotton string mops that you used to glimpse in the closets of your elementary school or the one you used to push in your first job at the ice cream shop? That’s what’s we are talking about, shades of old, used mop.

Read More →
Vagatile Atrofunction
Vagatile Atrofunction

There on a two page spread were the words writ large — they are now selling a cure for Vaginal Atrophy, a terrible turn of events I didn’t even know was possible. A healthy, beautiful woman with streaks of grey and elegant lines looked out from the page, serious, sexy and desirable, looking right at me to say, Yes, your crotch is going to turn to dust, and I’m here to help you.

Read More →

Essays From three books titled:

‘Houseplant Loveday’

‘Cooking for the Constitutionally Inept’

‘Housekeeping for the Slob at Heart’

Featured
When my husband cleans the kitchen. 
When my husband cleans the kitchen. 

All H1 had to do was make a piece of toast and it looked like the refrigerator exploded. Cabinet doors blown open, jars and lids and wrappers floating, him sitting in the happy midst of it all with buttered toast

Houseplant Love Day -- A note to the 'plant killers'
Houseplant Love Day -- A note to the 'plant killers'

The best plants for the self-identified plant killer are plants that stretch and turn towards the sun, plants that send up tender new leaves that unfurl into fresh new shapes.  These plants are a joy to care for because they respond, they grow, they evolve in the shifting light.

Cooking For The Constitutionally Inept
Cooking For The Constitutionally Inept

Court it, coax it, goose it, dampen it — to produce a successful meal, one must become a master of the flame. Electric coils, smooth glass tops, living, jumping flames that ignite and sputter — they all demand your curiosity and reverence, or they will ruin everything.

Housekeeping for the Natural Born Slob, an introduction
Housekeeping for the Natural Born Slob, an introduction

We had a beautiful meal from his elegant, clean kitchen, used the spa-like bathroom, then headed home in the cold winter night. As we were pulling out of the long driveway, my daughter asked from the backseat, with concern in her voice, “Are they coming back?” We said, huh? Coming back? Who’s coming back? And she said, “The slobs, are the slobs coming back?” She was genuinely troubled, frightened by their power, but we couldn’t help laughing. Oh, the terrible scary slobs!!