Cornell I found a broken bird on the bed but thought, That’s someone’s daughter. There were bottles and glasses and cans, a bong, the room in utter disarray, as the sheets were, blood smeared, scrunch...

Everyone Is On The Run These Days Treadmill tummy tuckers dominate that long gym pass window out to the street. A line of muscle shirts burning carbs like witches at the stake. Everyone is on the run ...

ADVICE FOR A LONELY FRIEND, NURSING A COLD Better to take the aspirin and blow your nose into a thousand different tissues than to fuck your own ass with your ex-wife's dildo. Dave Newman is the autho...

You Should Be Lightning In clear skies, if you can find them. Once I touch you, I can never let go. You should be thunder warning the less picky away. Once I start counting, I will never stop. So much...

Scream for Me, Chicago! “S’up, asshole, whatcha doing September 22nd?” My brother, Steve, never calls me the Polish Hammer because he calls himself the Polish Hammer. He calls me “asshole” since that’...

Cicadas        1. when we were children we collected the skins left behind on the trunks of trees        2. when I was young my father called them locusts and I didn’t question him        3. they seem...

Staying Classy I called my Uncle Rich late one night from my favorite tavern in town I had to let him know they were now serving his favorite beer, Schaefer. The one beer to have when you’re having mo...

Occam’s Razor I used to shave with Occam’s Razor, scraped simplicity across my stubbly cheeks each morning before I began my day as a psychoanalyst. The depressed, anxious, confused, and obsessional s...

THE WORLD AND HOW TO SURVIVE IT He said “Great pain brings great art” and I said “I don’t know, maybe.” But I hope not. He was a twat who talked a lot about creation but seldom created. His mom owned ...

Sex Shop Whips You should have seen the size of those suckers, they must have got a lot of lion tamers coming in. Deep down into the edible panty bowels of that basement sex shop. Run by large angry A...

Smith Corona Light out for the territory, you said Of course both of us wanted to be Rimbaud When Harry learns to dance we’ll make amends Until then Verlaine is old. I miss you in a Jane Kenyon way. I...

Out on the Streets of Hammond I’m fifty-one years old, staring down the barrel of fifty-two, and I still have no fucking idea what I wanna be when I grow up. I remember coming close to deciding about ...

Election Year Dream Interfaith banquet mainline Protestant church listening to strangers discuss over dinner rolls and butter distressing things they heard on NPR about the big crackdown experts worri...

Fun The first thing Al noticed was she ordered a shot of rotgut, then said, “Make it two. In two different shot glasses. Not a double.” Shane, the barman, said, “You’re the boss,” and went to get them...

Before Words, Into Light The Book of Immaculate Perception / Madrigals by Marc Zegans and Larry Beckett (Bamboo Dart Press) There is a lovely impossibility at the heart of The Book of Immaculate Perce...

Beaver County Auction In Monaca, notices are taped four or five deep on the screen doors. Grass, knee-high, creeps up the leg. I watch for poison ivy and dog poop—peer through broken panes of glass fo...

Running On Empty Sometimes, late at night when shadows whisper and the kids have stopped arguing and retreated to their bedrooms, and the dogs are fed and sleeping in the corner, and the lights have a...

Facekini I was in this little corner convenience near Ossington Station when an ultra-skinny dude wearing a green facekini strutted in. I'm sure he thought it looked cool, that it was one of those Mex...

Collecting Collectors So, I had my book launch for Mister Joe’s Pirates last Saturday at the Seidr Brewery in beautiful downtown Arab, Alabama. Seidr boasts a Norse mythology theme, which is to say al...

Last Words Thoreau’s sister Sophia, who was reading to him from A Week on the Concord and Merrimack when he died, claimed his last words were “Now comes good sailing.” William Ellery Channing, a frien...

Condolence Book I’m sorry for your loss. I’m deeply sorry for your loss. I’m sorry I lost my manners that night we were drinking in Maine. Your whole family is in my thoughts, especially that little n...

The Profane Art of Staying Alive: The Book of the Dirty Poet from Roadside Press Early in The Book of the Dirty Poet, its pseudonymous speaker reduces the secret of life to two pieces of advice: get l...

A Week After 9/11 and we still needed all the things people who just bought a house need, and on our way to buy them at Walmart, I remembered the chain email forwarded to me at least 5 times, telling ...

Thoughts of a half-dead woman Since I was twenty-nine doctors have been telling me I am nearly dead. There’s a strange freedom in being a half-dead woman. Risks are not measured by what is lost— but w...

The Teeth of the Years The great machinery of life grinds in silence while everyone inside it disappears. Nobody hears the little bones of the years being chewed. We wake up, clock in, stand beneath t...