WALKING THE DOG

I fumble with the collar, hands shaking.

The eagerness of the dog is my friend.

Down familiar streets,

I try to walk with my relationship around my ankles.

The dog shows me around.

Today the maple leaves have curled into crowns,

A hummer preens on the highest twig,

Puddles collect a flow of glimpses from the garden.

Tomorrow joins yesterday in retreat, Now wins the day.

And just in time.

My face tightened with pain, my heart shrunk, my ears burned

From the harshness of minutes before

In the past, where I am from.

I would despair

Were I not here

Now.

pubbed in UMM Binnacle Ultrashorts 2016

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   publ: everydayfiction 12-6-13

She wanted help, the thin, jowl-eyed lady. Long pink scars scattered like brush strokes up her brown arms and onto bare shoulders. Her hair hung resignedly past her shoulders. Her lipstick was only approximately in position. She teetered on gold open-heeled shoes.

“Just give me a strong lock and chain; 3 feet of chain that can go around the door handle. My husband threw the other one away. And he broke the last lock I had, like, like it was made of candy. He gets so rough when he drinks. I need to lock the bedroom better. When he decides he wants me, he just comes and takes me. I need a better way to keep him out.”

Married Love, Year Thirty

                     Published in U.M.M. Binnacle UltraShorts 2012


Fading memory is now our little family’s art,

And gravity unwraps the careful packaging of youth;

So let’s meet in serenity, embracing grief and joy,

In the mercy of moments that dawn perpetually.

When you quit pressing weekdays into weeks,

And I stop scraping flotsam into heaps,

We’ll come together in the unmapped dark

And shine our flashlights at the moon.

Married Love, July

Sticky warm, he left work at the crack of the last whip.

She stuck the paintbrush in the freezer in plastic like a lollipop for use tomorrow.

Wide flung doors and windows admitted a bit of cooling air. They stretched their paycheck on the rug for a picnic.

A little chicken, pasta salad, thank you. They talked about the news of job cuts and her long days. They each ate half a watermelon.

Out of the smoke of hills on fire, the full moon climbed the trellis emitting pure catlight.

During the night their stomachs talked like foghorns. In the morning, they met in the middle of the wiggle room before work.

There was still time to walk the dog.

Published here

Keeping Time

It was close to 9 A.M. when he hoisted his case and stepped outside. He felt late. The day had started badly. Green Bay was out of Super Bowl contention already. Shake it off. The street was filled with black grit and slush and snow lay like old manna on strips and patches of grass. Up the street, pitch and run. Sell. Tune in. Make it.

“Look, just bear with me a minute,” he told the short, shiny man wiping the snow from a parked car. “How many ways do you know to boil an egg? One. How many ways to chew it? One. You sleep, you wake up, you chew your eggs the same way every time. Do you want to just hang around till you die of old age?”

The little man was listening. He was buying, Diskus knew. 

“Break your wife out of the ordinary. Surprise her. No occasion. It’ll mean a lot to her. The gold in this chain is worth $15.00 by itself.” Diskus proffered a delicate pendant and chain.

Butterfly Love

The butterfly lit on the end of my ring finger near the passion vine.  I pulled the little lasso tight.  She fluttered up to the length of her new silk leash like the loveliest of rising kites.

I sensed no panic, no fear of captivity; her buoyancy teased against the weightless tether, somehow knowing I would wine her on nectar and dine her on pollen and bed her tonight in a blanket of thistle down.  I’d thought it through.

We roamed the garden planted for her, reviewing the long sprays, sampling the bright clusters.  She was content to ride with folded wings, princess-like, in black and orange velvet.

Toward dusk we settled on the lawn for the night.  Neither of us could eat.  We went in when dampness reached my bones.

Now I will support her as long as necessary, hand on my heart.  I will let her stitch my fingers together with her sticky thread and wait with her, while she slips into something else.

If only I could see the swelling of her tiny heart and hear it beat.

Binnacle UltraShort H.M.

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