Voyage

You are uncharted,
compelling, beautiful
undiscovered country.
I need no map or compass.
It is enough to be lost.

You are unsettled,
mystical, wonderful
wilderness terrain.
I only slowly know you
and go without a path.

I am unraveled,
reworked, transformed,
wrought anew.
You seem at times like dreamwork,
I hope we will not wake.

Poem

Were there some magic
to weave us today
into the warp and weft
of one another's lives,

know that I would speak it
and be woven

as a single strand, a bright
bright thread, stitched in
stitched out, but there no less
drawn through the needle's eye
into some rich design.

Blabbing for the first time on Gabcast...

Ok, I decided to try the internet audio thang for size. Y'all better not laugh now!

Poetry Reading: Get Your Mic On! ("Out There")

You Don't Know

A dragon eats at my heart every day,
every second of every day that numbers itself with my breath,
and a knight rides out of nothing into daylight, where the blond river
threatens to flood the pale plain.

Great thistles grow
and blue-black starlings wolf-whistle at the tops of trees;
thick and soupy stormclouds
wallow in the workday afternoon.

Small things, chips of love, little splinters of fury,
shining catchy motes unvacuumed from the thoughts;
shrapnel of meaning, bouncing to a standstill
drained of inertia
once mistaken for impetus.

2007

Shadow's Imprint

It was the first time I had read the Bible to an audience in almost three decades. It was the only comfort, apart from hospitality, that I could offer on that day. I saw myself and my family as bearers of a tattered banner, leading the walking wounded from a bomb-blasted trench––though crippled myself.

My daughter’s friends and her dead boyfriend’s friends and family stood in silence around my swimming pool on a bright spring afternoon, waiting to hear what I had to say. Somehow I’d been placed there to give comfort, the only person who dared speak to an audience even as my voice shook. I held my King James Bible, a Christening gift from my godmother. My hands were damp as I raised the book close enough to read the tiny oldstyle type. I squinted as I raised my heart to a point in the distant reaches of the sky. I took a slow, open–mouthed breath. The gray-white parchment riffled for a second before I steadied it with an index finger. My soul rose into my throat and warm tears into my eyes.

"The Lord’s my shepherd. I shall not want…"

As I read, my mind repeated the sharp lessons I had so reluctantly learned:

An average of one person dies by suicide every 18 minutes in the United States…

"He maketh me to lie in green pastures. ..."

Males complete suicide 4.1 times more often than females…

“He leadeth me beside the still waters…”

Each suicide intimately affects at least six other people…

The words rose with the unique vigor of all things Biblical. My voice was no longer mine; it belonged to the power of that psalm. It did not matter that I was strained to tears by the act of reading words so much greater than myself; it did not matter that I had only decided to read them just a few minutes ago; it mattered that God spoke through the strata of millennia and reminded each one of us that there is more to life and death than we are permitted to know.

“He restoreth my soul…”

…Based on the number of suicides since 1970, the number of survivors of suicide in the United States is estimated at 4.4 million. The number grows by 175,000 each year.

What mattered most, what left a lasting impression on every person present, was the simple fact that we all did want – desperately – in spite of such divine promises of succour. We wanted to know how could he? and why? How could the Lord leave these good people wanting when he is their shepherd? We wanted to know what did I do wrong? We wanted to read the dark subtext to a horrific suicide. We wanted to know “what about the people who are emotionally mutilated by each and every self–inflicted death?” and “how far do these black ripples go before they lose their power?”

This hasty gathering of the shell–shocked revealed something I had been fortunate enough never to know before. The victims are not the ones who hang, drug, or shoot themselves; it’s the people they leave behind who carry the burden. For the guy who throws himself under the morning commuter train, it’s all over in a flash of sparks and the passing of steel wheels. But those waiting on the platform, the targets of this ultimate act of abuse–– the parents, friends, partners, co–workers–– they are left with their tickets in their hands, their questions unanswered, their guilt and loss wedged against the buffers.

My daughter was only 16 when she met him. She has always been headstrong, and was preoccupied with romantic relationships, to my dismay, very early in her life. Each new love, each crush, each date, she wore on her mantle like a medal. Shadow, as he was known, was puzzling and intense right from the start, and her most mysterious love object.

He was into “exotic” pets: spiders, lizards, anything eccentric and especially anything likely to confront the uninitiated with an up–close view of primal phobia. He was slightly stooped, nondescript, painfully thin, and his pointed face and hooded eyes reminded me of a bird of prey. He kept terrible poisonous snakes, including a pair of cobras, in his tiny apartment; he spent his time gathering specimens of unusual insects and other leavings of nature such as skeletons and pelts. He seemed to carry alienation and dashed hopes like a backpack full of lead.

I already knew the situation was on the precipice when the phone rang on a Sunday morning, just as we were done with breakfast. My husband was sitting at the desk tying his sneakers and we were lost, as usual, in small talk about the flow of tasks and activities that make up each week. All I remember from that phone call is a disembodied female voice and the phrase “You’d better come over here. Shadow’s hanged himself.”

My immediate reaction was that it was a nasty prank, and I turned back to my chores before I realized, at a distance from myself, that I had to find out the truth. We got into the car, leaving hasty instructions to my other two children, and drove to his apartment. I chanted all the way that I hoped it was not true, but the crowd in the parking lot outside their door, the flashing lights and uniforms, told me I was wrong.

Our lives are stained indelibly by that morning.

The last words I said to him were as I put my hand on his dead face in the emergency room after I identified his apparently kinless corpse. “Stupid boy. Just when I thought I might get to like you.”
Even now I can only tell this story with trepidation. I’m not ashamed, but the silent horror and raw fear on the faces of the first unlucky recipients of my cursed tale were more than enough to tell me this was a unique act of violence. Everyone it touched was a victim, and everyone they told was a victim. People who hardly knew us wrote moving letters of sympathy, or wiped away tears.

The worst of it was the up–close damage: my daughter waking me at night to tell me she had seen his face inside the washing machine; telling my little son that someone he had known for one quarter of his life had decided they wanted to die; the manipulative relatives who materialized late, overstayed their welcome, and overplayed their misfortune cards; the unspeakable desire to pursue him to hell, drag him out of the brimstone, and beat him. I was so consumed with fury that I dreamt repeatedly of speaking to his corpse, listening to its horror and fear of decay, while a faceless, smug pathologist says, “they all do this…”

“It’s like a nail bomb going off in a movie theater,” I told my mother. “ Everyone it touches is hurt by it. It leaves scars. People treat you like you’re made of glass.” By telling and retelling, I felt I was abusing the good ears of my listeners, even those who knew us well enough to wish they could take on some of the pain we felt at being dragged into the death of an interloper in my child’s life. It is a burden that my whole family will always carry. The day the reaper came over to play.
“Your life is your own,” I had told myself as a teenager. “Why should you not choose the manner, the hour, of your own departure?” Then decades later, as a mother, I strove to stand firm as those black ripples of violence washed over my family, and I saw that for the self–indulgent sophistry that it is.

Four years later I was touched again by this most personal of scourges. A close friend, a cop in the town where I live, was part of a high-profile police sting operation that not only involved collaboration with national network TV, but also netted a member of the judiciary. This perpetrator chose to stifle his own conscience with a gun. The man died in hospital after being airlifted there in an attempt to save his life. Controversy stormed the town where I live. The man's sister spoke to our council of her terrible grief, her family's hideous loss. She saw her brother's death, she said, not as a suicide but as the result of victimization. Given the presence of TV cameras on the man's lawn when he died, it was impossible not to see her point of view.

My friend, the author of the arrest warrant, was devastated. He wrote to me of feeling “worthless and useless,” months after it had happened. He spoke of lasting guilt and regret for the unremarkable choice to follow directives (and keep his job) instead of his inner misgivings. Others in the community wondered if he would pull through. And this time, I had no Bible in my hand; I was no more than a collection of characters on a computer screen, voicing my sadness and my fear for him in the most impersonal way. “Everyone except the absent fool who planted the bomb is scarred or maimed,” I wrote. “Suicide is a choice, not something others bring upon you.”

What else could I say? There were no simple answers other than that a man decided to kill himself--and visit the consequences of his choice on blameless others--to avoid the consequences for himself. As one of those intimately affected by suicide, I know that all who stand in the blast zone are left with the same futile question: What could I have done to prevent this?

The answer is nothing. That's all there is to it. Nothing.

Now, I know what I would say to a suicidal person, how I could confront them with the reality of what they are contemplating:

Don’t just think about the people you would leave behind. Instead be guilty over wanting to violate and wound them. Be guilty and let your conscience lead you away from becoming a vessel for violence against others. Think of who will discover you, of the cops who have to treat a scene of distress like the scene of a homicide. Think of the quiet questions of friends, neighbors, co-workers. Think of the horrible gray color that spreads over every person involved, the color you will never see. Suicide relieves pain only by inflicting it a thousand times over.

God is right. It is a sin, and for good reason.

Gran's Home Remedies for Miserable Gits

Author's note: This is a random recap of some treasured memories of my grandmother, Margaret Creber, who passed away in 1990. I wrote this for my mom, brother, and sister on what would have been her 90th birthday.

"Jock" is my grandfather, her husband of 50 years, Bill Creber, and "Toni" is my father's second wife, a woman about whom, when introduced as her son, my brother said, "I have no biological connection to this woman whatsoever..."

Gran's Home Remedies for Miserable Gits

• Teaching me to make pastry and gravy and clobbering me with a wooden spoon for nicking crispy bits off the meat.
• Rewarding irreverence in her impressionable grandchildren.
• Bringing us mint Aeros and crisps and Tizer in the car while we sit there when the grownups are in the pub having a swift one.
• Always making exactly the same Roast Dinner with about nine variations of potato.
• Reciting morbid old poems like "Little Boy Blue" and "Lucy Grey," and singing lullabies about ghostly babies and lost kittens.
• Thinking all the men are idiots but wisely admitting that, well, we can do with them sticking around.
• Always giving me a fiver and a packet of fags (she never called them cigarettes so why should I?).
• Only smiling for photos when she is asleep.
• Turning a blind eye if I helped myself to a Gin and Tonic (at least once she figured I was old enough at about 10).
• Intimidating buffalo-sized yokels with fists like toasted stiltons and clods of cow crap on their boots when they wouldn't leave the Pub after Last Orders.
• Not laughing at the Christmas cracker jokes unless she was reading them.
• Not possessing any crockery unless it is chipped.
• Going to the loo with the door open so that she can see everything we're doing.
• Teaching us kids the word "git."
• Calling everyone's girl or boyfriend "that" so-and-so, and coining the nickname "still life" for one of them.
• Providing every comic known to man, even the really gory ones like Battle and Action.
• Doing the football pools without ever even winning ½p and never complaining.
• Having Zero Tolerance for any hair color that is not either black or white.
• Buying all of the trashy sunday tabloids every single weekend, even the Sunday Sport.
• Giving us really huge pairs of knickers for Christmas so that Mum could say they would come in handy for the pageant at Adstock Festival.
• Getting huge entertainment value out of the Bullesye darts game show on the telly.
• Being able to see through glasses encrusted with 3mm of pastry crumbs, flour, and gravy.
• Wearing crimplene.
• Never buying anything that was not from Marks and Sparks (except the knickers, which were really cheap at Woolies).
• Expressing her opinions with ego-withering simplicity.
• Stuffing us with CurlyWurlies and fruit gums and providing a bottomless lake of Tizer and Bitter Lemon.
• Taking a vow of dietary devotion to Rennies (Tums), brandy, eggs, and potatoes.
• Writing about being dead in a little notebook that I now own.
• Not raining on Dad's parade unless she was official deputy for Jock.
• Always raining on Jock's parade because he is a good practice target.
• Staying calm around Toni.
• Never learning to drive so she didn't have to go anywhere
• Introducing Tom to Judge Dredd, and still having no idea what it was all about.
• Often writing letters, always remembering birthdays.
• Sleeping in an armchair sitting up with her mouth open.
• Never smacking our bottoms even when we were cheeky.
• Wearing a silly paper hat for the entire duration of Christmas dinner and maintaining an unwaveringly stony face.
• Shooting her dentures out at us like the drawer of a cash register when Mum wasn't looking.
• Developing an entire beauty regimen using only face powder, Oil of Ulay, and glasses ornamented with groovy blobs of pastry.
• Getting her foot stuck round the S bend of the lav.
  
  
  These little treasures are kind of a safety-bag that stops me from waking up one morning to discover that I have become a miserable old git.

Part 3: The Case of the Murphy Chicken Rustlers by "Slue-Foot Sue"

“They’re escalating it,” I tell my family. “This is serious.” Ms. all–grown–sassy snatches the Messenger with a petulant sigh.

“Geez! What is wrong with people? Criminal Mischief – Turkey Pen? Is there some, like, hillbilly encampment around here?”

“Some people have horses. Maybe there are turkeys too,” I say. “But perhaps it’s a misprint. They meant to say Mont Blanc instead of turkey.”

Since then, I’m consumed by continual questions and imaginings. For one thing, just what kind of criminal mischief might one perform in a turkey pen and, more unimaginably, why? And who are these ruthless abductors of poultry anyway? Are they slipping through some sort of spacetime wormhole from the days of the Chisholm Trail? Did Huck Finn spring from the pages of a paperback and start running off with livestock? And from a practical viewpoint, how do you steal a chicken (never mind four at once) without causing an unholy racket and waking every dog within half a mile? Did they duct–tape their beaks closed?

My husband thinks they probably got out of someone’s yard and were eaten by the local coyotes or bobcats, but Wile E. Coyote has not returned calls for comment and I have been unsuccessful in my efforts to contact Buzzard community leaders for information about any unexpected meals they may have discovered. I can’t drive fast enough through Murphy to catch up with Roadrunner for a quote, and I hate to imagine what Foghorn Leghorn might say. Maybe they were performing chickens and decided to seek fame and fortune in Las Vegas. I saw a chicken that could ride a tiny bicycle at a carnival when I was a little kid.

I have considered the possibility of the poor birds falling victim to Bigfoot, who would obviously be unable to stroll into Seven–Eleven for a hotdog, even if Elvis is still doing it from time to time. It could even be the chupacabra or, worse, alien abduction. But I can’t believe that any self–respecting alien or chupacabra would commit criminal mischief in a turkey pen. It’s just not good image management. So, I’ll just have to keep my eyes and ears open and hope that this strange touch of the Badlands will be explained in time. Perhaps some public–spirited citizen will speak up at a council meeting and ask for police protection for the vulnerable feathered residents of our city.

Part 2: The Case of the Murphy Chicken Rustlers by "Slue-Foot Sue"

Author's note: For those not in the know, Slue-Foot Sue was the wife - or sweetheart - of Pecos Bill. My husband looks a little bit like him, but younger and much better preserved. (No really)

The ironic date of the next chicken–rustling incident, close to Easter, was obvious to my kids before it dawned on me. As before, it was the lack of detail that made the whole thing so fascinating.

“Case number blurble–blurble. X block of Y Street. Theft – chicken,” I said, brandishing a strawberry. “Only a single victim this time.”

“It’s an early April Fool,” my adult daughter told me. “You’ve been had.”

“You think the cops are behind it? In that case it was a Christmas Fool too. Pass the coffee.”

“It’s a Happy Easter joke, mom,” said my youngest.

My cheeky high–schooler mused, staring out of the window: “Maybe O Donut was closed…”

“They could have been potential grand champions in the State Fair of Texas,” said my husband.

“Aha! I said. That’s it. 4–H rivalry. It’s getting out of control. It’s the same street as last time.”

“So someone stole a chicken from the dorky kid in class instead of wrapping their house?”

“You may think you’re all grown, but don’t sass your mom. Some kids put themselves through college with livestock fair money.”

My investigative wires were humming, big–time. I was always meant to be a gumshoe. “It’s probably Wylie 4–H versus Plano East FFA,” I said. “They targeted the chickens because it would be really difficult to hide a pig or a steer.”

The kids didn’t know which parent to leer at.

“It’s a bit more serious than cow–tipping… We did that when I was in tenth grade,” added my husband, as he opened the door to leave for work. “Nobody minded it much. Bye all!”
“…except the iron–age cows…” said my eldest, inspecting her nails and glancing at the door as it closed.

“What’s cow–tipping, mom?” asked my youngest.

“Ask your dad when he gets home. He can explain it better than I can. I’m just a city gal. I don’t know what the rural young generation is coming to these days…”

After the herd had hit the trails for the day, I wondered what sort of childhood trauma might predispose an adolescent to eliminate livestock show rivals by purloining their poultry, and realized that perhaps, whatever the story was, it could involve a loved pet just the same as if it were a missing cat or dog. I was very fond of my pet canary when I was a kid; there’s no reason why you couldn’t become just as attached to a chicken.

A week or two later came the last straw – or should I say the last feather...

Part 1: The Case of the Murphy Chicken Rustlers by "Slue-Foot Sue"

This story and the succeeding two parts were published in our local newspaper, the Murphy Messenger, in 2005. Only the chosen few know the "whole story," which does NOT involve actual theft of chickens or any other type of farm critter...


Last January, my post–Christmas doldrums were unexpectedly brightened by the Weekly Incident Report from Murphy Police. I love police blotters for their just–the–facts–ma’am style– as well as for what they leave out. There’s an untold story behind every pithy entry, hiding like a gecko under a house brick.

“Case number blibbety–blah,” I recited, waving a bagel. “X block of Y Street. Four chickens stolen.” I felt as if I should be hunched over a battered desk in a sleazy office, staring at a bulging dossier. I’d be tapping the ash from a chewed cigar into an overflowing ashtray next to an empty bottle of rye. I’d stub out the cigar, sling on a dingy raincoat, and leave without warning to hunt down the culprits.

Several pairs of eyes stared at me over breakfast. “That’s what it says, kids: four chickens stolen.” I stared back at my uncharacteristically quiet offspring. “Here, look.”

“Mom, come on. Why would anybody steal a chicken?”

“They probably ran away…”

“Yeah, mom. There’s no such thing as a chick–napper.”

They were right. Something didn’t fit. Wal–Mart usually has a pretty sweet deal on chicken and even if you’re really starving, a fully–feathered live bird of unknown age is not the quickest (or the most appetizing) path to a full stomach. “Maybe some animal rights activists liberated them,” I said. “Or the stores were closed and someone was desperate for a plate of chicken fricassee.”

“It’s them durn furriners,” said my husband in his best Oklahoma twang. “Or injuns.” He fixed the kids with his Clint Eastwood stare. “Prob’ly the Dalton Gang. We better be on the lookout. May need to send a posse…”

“Dad, why would the Dalton Gang steal chickens when there are so many banks in Murphy – and trains, too?”

Sipping coffee, I imagined stealthy boot–clad footsteps in the dead of night, the cautious creak of a henhouse door, the muffled squawks of plump hens yanked from slumber. They’d be stuffed into a burlap sack, slung over the shoulder of some ruthless, silver–toothed desperado whose hasty escape sets some farmer’s mangy yellow dog barking into the dark. Clapboard shutters, flung open in my daydream, swayed on rusty hinges. “CLETUS! Git ma gun! It’s them chicken rustlers agin!” Aiming precariously, he’d break the rumble of retreating hooves with a shotgun blast into the billowing dust, lower his weapon, and stand there in baggy long–johns, rubbing the back of his head. “Dadblamed chicken rustlers! Dognabbit!”

At their hideout, the desperadoes would gloat over their ill-gotten gains. They’d spit in the campfire, curse their horses, drink ghastly coffee, shoot randomly into the night with six–guns, and plan the next raid…

After that, I started checking the Weekly Incident Report, snatching the Messenger from the usual wad of junk in the mailbox, looking for more hen–heists.

Of course, it was only a matter of time…

CSI Murphy By "Chick Tracy" -- Fireworks

This was written for submission to a local newspaper, but was never pulished on account of its... well, irreverence towards the Forces of Law and Order, hehe...

Case# 05042401: Word on the beat is that some local louts broke the fireworks ordinance, of all things. Worse, these delinquents had not even the decency to wait until 4th July. At least that's what my husband did. He cunningly chose the very time to indulge his pyromaniac tendencies when Murphy's Finest would be inundated with similar petty acts of sedition and unable to make it to our neck of the woods.

I remember having visions of blazing trees crashing onto the houses of innocent neighbors even now.

"I refuse to be involved in such lawlessness," I told him, as he headed out to the driveway with a fistful of bottle rockets. "You are setting a bad example to the children."

"But it's only a few little ones. What's the harm? Anyway, you stuck a bottle rocket in the compost pile to celebrate your fortieth birthday…"

"Yeah, Mom," my son added, proving my point.

"Fine," I said, weakening. "But no big ones." I’d forgotten about this momentary lapse of judgment. It seemed appropriate at the time.

At the end of the driveway, hubbie dearest had parked his truck so that it blocked the entrance. "They won't even see us," he quipped, with a wolfish light in his eyes. It was going to be a standoff situation, no question about it. I could only hope he'd forgotten the combination to the gun safe.

My son placed a tiny green plastic object, a little like a propeller, onto the ground. "Can I light this one? Huh? Huh?"

"Won't it fly up in the air? Shouldn't you light it over there where there are no trees?"

"Hang on. Let me look at the instructions," hubbie said, lighting a cluster of smoke bombs and stepping well back. A cloud of green, white, and yellow smoke billowed across the lawn. A cop car cruised slowly by, stirring the smoke with its languid slipstream.

"Oh Lord," I thought. "The game's up..." I could see it coming. “Drop the Black Cats and no–one gets hurt…”

The car continued on its way, drifting up the street like Leviathan of the Deep. I wiped the cold beads of sweat from my brow. “They’ll be back – with the SWAT team,” I muttered.

"Right," my husband declared. "Gimme that." He snatched the little propeller thingy from the driveway as my son jumped up and down on the spot like a gibbon.

"Spins and shoots out yellow sparks like burning wheel," he read. "There. It's one of those little rotating ones. It stays on the ground."

"Well all right then," I said. "But I did warn you."

He lit the touch paper with an inappropriately large flame from the grill lighter and placed the innocuous-looking object on the ground. Within a second it began to spin rapidly and then it shot skywards like a Patriot missile, flinging blazing embers in every direction.

"Jeez Louise..." someone said.

It went some 50 feet into the air and then drifted back down, still emitting sparks, drifting towards our maple tree as if magnetized. It floated down through the delicate leaves, amazingly without setting fire to anything, and landed in the middle of a patch of weeds.

After a stunned moment of silence, my son said, "Can I light some sparklers? Huh? Huh?"

"Fill yer boots up," I said, grabbing the garden hose. It had one of those pistol nozzles on it. The SWAT team would appreciate the heroism, I thought.

Poems: The Brokenwolf Verses I

Apron Strings

The evening air, mist–laden, takes up the slow sounds,
holds them new like
a recent birth.
I climb from the hammock like a newly–standing foal,
trying its untried hooves and
going forth, unsure, treading soft.
There on the evening road a girl jogs
nonchalantly by with her parade–pony hair
bouncing behind her
and the mothering air
holds on
to the sound of her feet.
A neighbor’s house has Christmas lights glowing
in March; bright, balanced
water balloons; blister–shaped birds
lining the roof–ridges.
The air brings me voices, my husband’s laughter, distant,
enveloped.And my son floats by on his scuffed skateboard,
taking aim, pointed perilously,
perfectly,
at the driveway.
He is faint in the sunset, enclosed and
cruising in,
cushioned by the dusk.
He breaks the air’s grasp, runs out
through the wrappings,
suddenly there,
laughing and certain
on his untried feet, going forth, so sure,
leaving his skateboard rocking
precariously
where it fell.

2005

Potter’s Apprentice

Uncertain of their craft, hands at the wheel
move without force of making.
The thrusting forth of meaning
from the sludge of creation
takes place as trial and error
stand in for design.
This anyway is the picky part, not
the vanquishing of amorphous gunge with
the will to shape.
This is that endless
crafting and recrafting, leveling and refining of form,
the timorous
play and replay of making strokes that some
like me
can never end.

2005

The Dogs of Damascus

To be blinded by the light is
that most signal of ironies, to suddenly
see what sight itself has hidden
all along. And that most signal of clichés is that
later revelations are mere echoes
of this primal divine overkill.
Now, all this would be a great and happy ending, but for
the unwritten consequence—
a persecuting villain transformed
into a persecuting hero who unleashed
—let slip—
a persecuting horde.
For Saul the light that blinded was only to reveal
a wolf in wolf’s clothing,
whose snout and gray fur poked through gaps
in a hew halo, whose binding
blinding vengeance
still bays
at the heels of centuries.

2005

The Goliath Stone

Not just any old rock,
the boy kept it for years.
He found it by the oasis
as he put down his harp and
watched the sheep drink.
Worn smooth, yellowy,
small and good in the hand,
it was a perfect fit
for the slingshot—
a perfect weight, shaped to fly loose
at the apex of the swing,
shaped to fly true
as if made just for him.

2005

Spell

The window, open, takes
the slick hours and lets them slide
like oil, poured from a saucer.
Mouthing
in a veil of smoke, I try to speak
some powerful word to call them back.
They fall
onto the waiting ground and seep unseen,
trickling
into the hungry earth.

1994

Road Rash

As I was driving
as I was
as I was driving and the road rose up
to meet me and my
shortcomings,
As I was,
I could not leave you.
The lighted distance stretched, and the dark
yawned. Beyond,
I saw the red sunset,
the moon leering,
the purple dawn spreading,
your face, rolling the miles by.
The road rose, and it fell
the road went around,
turned back.
The moon laughs still, looking down
From its territory in the sky.

1998

Fire–dogs

Slough of combustion, despondent
in the hunkered-down glow
at the hearth’s throat.
Caked with cold, he sets measured feet
into the room, breath steam
haloing the porch light.
I take up the last log, warm but still damp,
that he brought in
last night.
He takes off his shoes,
sets his coat on a hook.
The forgotten fire
struggles to burn.

2004

A Moon Man

For an instant, I saw the moon
as plain as day,
beaming and bathing
in his own
quiet rays.
He sang with tears as the Irish do, caressing
a harp with silver chords,
but he smiled at the
notes that wove the air like mayflies—
shining
and gone too fast.
As I threw coins into the dingy hat
between his
crooked feet,
I saw many moons, wedged into
the crevices of the city,
grinders of poverty’s art,
destitution’s acolytes.
I still throw coins,
a pagan rite of offering,
into the well
of want, but
the alchemy of offering will not turn them
into suns.

1987/2005

Haiku

Ignore the numbness
stunning your brain,
spreading like cancer,
splashing like rain.

1979/2005

Served Warm

I hope only that
she will devour you,
for all
Bluebeards should suffer
—be devoured—
devoured, stripped, engulfed.
It is folly for
Me
To foul my own heart
by craving
your bloodied head—
yet I imagine this time will come
and then you
will be hanging
in her hidden room.

2004

Moving On

It was that flood winter.

The house went from under me—

mudsliding into the ruined past.
No time to prepare, just

get out, get out quick as it all

collapses.

Sheets of rain slashed the street.

Garbage cans capsized, rolled downhill,

noisy and damaged like drunks.

My heart watched the For Sale sign

beating in the wind

and I signed our lives

into the downpour.

Anemones flourished early that year

even so.

1996

In Transit

You have become a stranger,
and I never saw it
at the time.
I saw the sky change color,
I saw the leaves fall.
I saw my children grow
a little in that space of time.
But I did not see you
as you put your coat on
and stood at the edge,
waiting to go.
You’re still waiting.
I see.
And I hear the mad rhythm
of an angry heart;
I hear the wind’s fingers
stirring the trees.
The martens at morning,
the moths at night.
And you are standing
at the edge, stooped,
watching the ground,
waiting to go.

2004

Forgive

In time the pain’s mean bloom will finish
its shabby graveyard task
and something will be left behind,
some sort of fossil.
Something I can hang on a wall
like the ancient stone-clad fish I got
one Christmas; you wanted
the sabre-tooth facsimile instead.
Something like the soul’s gray laundry
swaying stiffly in a winter morning breeze.
But nothing with a name,
nothing with a grave.
No marker.
Then I may walk past it as if nonchalant,
feigning what eludes me, but what passes affably
for that unfeelingness they call "closure."
For who is going to see one rotten patch of loss
frozen in the sweeping timescape
of a lifetime?

2005

Out There

How we are lost, torn one after another away like mussels from a reef,

trailing sand-peppered beards and going

forever into the tide.

How else can it be? The currents pull and ebb,

they grasp and let go, impelled by the distant tug

of some cosmic magnet.

"I didn’t have time to say goodbye!" I call.

And my voice is nothing, as all voices are;

taken in the greedy onrush

of what has been

and what must be.

Somewhere out in the lost places, somewhere you’ll be

Remembering perhaps how we went this or that way together,

and how we tried to fight against

the weakening bonds, each to the other;

how we fought to stay,

and not be drawn away.

Somewhere out in the great quiet drift, somewhere you’ll be

lit up in a brief flash of silver, or the slow weave of fronds,

somewhere never quite gone, and never quite lost.

And somewhere I'll be waiting, and holding to the hours,

and waiting,

for every tide must turn.

2005

Under Construction

Outside in the
gradient-filtered winter air, cranes
like great long-necked animals
wait as the building opposite slowly
clothes itself, first
the underlayers not normally for
plain sight, the silvered ducts and gray floors,
and then later
the outer garments of glass, prefabricated
concrete, smoothly cladding
bones of steel
the way a sun-stretched hide
covers what the lions took,
another husk spreading to powder
under the blank sky.

2006

Memoir (From "Bindweed"): "Sunday"

It was on a Sunday that my mother got up just like every other Sunday morning and put out cereal and toast and coffee for breakfast. I was in my room, putting on my white tights and a green skirt that I never liked, fussing at my hair, wishing I had a different face.

She negotiated with me about what to wear to Church just fifteen minutes before we were meant to leave, saying "you can't go out looking like that, Margaret" while Dad paced back and forth, harrumphing, clattering keys, adjusting his belt. "Come on, you lot," he barked. I stamped back upstairs like a toddler and scraped off my mascara and eye shadow with a wet cloth.

She was peeling Sunday lunch vegetables as we left. "Perhaps you could make the gravy when you get home, Marg."

"Oh mum! I wanted to go round to Caroline's..."

"Now, Margaret..."

She had stopped what she was doing, her meticulous attention to the meal preparations, and she was standing at the back door. The perhaps was not a request. She had one hand on the jamb. She was wearing her every Sunday blue-gray housecoat, made of soft, generous fabric. Warm smells of oregano, garlic, lemon, and thyme swirled around her, congealed into steam, headed skyward to flee the heavy cold.

Dad, sensing nothing, quick-marching along his daily highway, said with a boyish grin, "All right, you lot. Fall in. Tallest on the right, shortest on the left!"

My brother and sister scuttled into their joke positions on the joke military line-up and stood in exaggerated postures of attention. They waited, as if for an actress who has missed a cue, for me to assume the position on the right, now precarious as I was not destined for great physical stature. I was usually first and I usually scuffled with my brother over the rightmost position in the rank.

"Margaret! You're making us late you stupid twit," hissed my brother. I turn round and aim my favorite glare into his heart. "Shuddup, you."

My mother scanned her eyes from one of us to the other. There was something in them that I couldn’t quite see, something important, something that clutched at her voice.

"Oh, children, please don't argue and call each other names. You should be looking after each other." She was looking at me with her very green eyes.

Dad ordered all of us into the car with a “right! Fall out!” and we left, just like all the other Sunday mornings, after the usual head-butting over the front seat.

And when we returned home, anticipating the deep pleasure of roast chicken and potatoes and thick, herbed stuffing, we were about the business of our Sunday without a care. Like every other Sunday we opened to door onto the lunch smell and tumbled into the kitchen. Like every other Sunday the day was already mapped before us, a boy-scout game: my brother complaining about Songs of Praise on the telly instead of cartoons, my mother and I bickering over why I had not made my bed or cleaned my sink, making grudging gravy, my sister making little islands and mountains and fairy gardens out of her mashed-up lunch.

But it was on this Sunday that my mother got up just like every other Sunday, prepared a delightful roast chicken lunch in her usual style, wrote a letter to my father, placed it at his place on the table, packed her things, and literally walked out of our lives for good. She didn’t even take her car.

I can't remember if I made gravy or not. It doesn't matter now. And somehow roast chicken always tastes dry and sticks to the lining of my throat.

Story: The Heart's Secret Eye

He was shaving as Leila opened the door and came into the bathroom. He stood at the basin with a towel wrapped about his girth, and his head tilted sharply to one side, peering into the mirror. He scraped the razor across the stout bristles of his cheeks and chin, swirled the razor blade in a circle in the water after each stroke. Leila smelt the deep lovely smell of his body, showered and clean, and of cologne and deodorant, cool and fresh with cedar and citrus.

Although he could not be preparing himself for another woman, her desperate sick heart imagined that he might. He looked around at her with his face half covered in lather like a mask, the razor, dripping red-flecked foam, in his hand. The real side of his mouth said, “Hey, cutie. Wanna fool around?”

She looked up at him, at the bright light bouncing from the mirror around his head, at his slick hair and the little merry creases at the corners of his eyes. Was it the real side, or the side with the mask?

Something swelled and sank in her chest, but she smiled back, making her eyes sparkle only for him, her husband of seven years, the one and only who could move the sky itself for her and in her. I wish I had a secret eye that could see into the very depths of him and know the truth. All would sit right with me if I only knew the truth…of all his heart.

Through all of their marriage, the same curse had haunted her steps: she knew that he was not completely sincere, saw circumstantial shreds of a truth he would not tell, and watched as they evaporated into the air like dew. She had asked him on occasion to explain some phone number or another or a receipt for drinks – plural – at some anonymous airport bar, and sensed that there was something rehearsed about his answers.

Leila told her best friend about her fears, while they ate sushi one evening.

“Funny you should mention it,” said her friend, preening the shoulders of her blue-black satin jacket. “I just might have the answer.” She rummaged in her sequinned purse, arching up her black eyebrows, pulling out a bunch of shiny keys, two or three silver lipstick cases, and an engraved gold pen. From the very bottom of the purse, she produced a small brown leather pouch with a black drawstring. She hung this on one of her long, white, curved fingernails, swinging it in the air for a few moments, assessing it through her sharp, black, pinpoint eyes. Then she tossed it across the table to land beside Leila’s plate with a soft, substantial sound.

“I was doing a class on Native American belief systems, and I did extra credit by helping to repair a sweat lodge. The holy man who led vision quests in the lodge said that each of us could ask him one favor.” She paused for a moment and eyed a tasty chunk of unagi lingering on her plate before she snatched it with lightning-sharp chopsticks. “…One magical favor,” she continued, with dramatic emphasis.

Leila waited without breathing, wondering if this might be the answer.

“I don’t know what came over me, but I told him I wanted to be able to see the true contents of one other person’s heart. He gave me this little bag here and he told me to eat the thing inside it before I went to sleep. Then he said to lie thinking, as I was going to sleep, of the person whose heart I wanted to open.” She eyed Leila steadily over her long, narrow nose. “It looks rather drab to me.”

Leila picked up the little bag and loosened the drawstring. There was a small round, brown chunk of something that might have been earth or a dried tuber. “Don’t you want it?”

“I saved it. For a time like this. Maybe it’s peyote. You’ll go on an adventure.”

“It probably is,” said Leila, “thanks.” She put the bag in her purse, noticing the strange warmth that lingered in her hand.

“Something funny he said was…” She jabbed at the pink pile of ginger on her plate.

“What?” Leila paused to listen, holding a California roll in her fingers.

“…Well, it was that you would find out what you already knew.”

“That would be because you would only try it about someone you really care about, and that would mean that somewhere in your own heart, you know the truth about them already.”

That night, Leila lay in her wide, soft bed, alone. He was on a plane to Dallas, catching the late flight so that he could “be up bright and early” as he had said as he took her in his arms and pressed her to his chest, flattening her like a rag doll. The downward current of fear began to pull at her again, making her sleepless. She thought of the object in her purse and reminded herself: All would sit right with me if I only knew the truth…of all his heart.

She jumped from the bed and bounced across the floor to the dresser where she had left her purse. She opened it and fumbled inside for the little bag. Finding it, she drew it open, plucked out the object, and crammed it into her mouth like an oversized Starburst.

After a couple of frantic chews, she realized that it tasted bitter and repulsive, with a thick and penetrating scent that rose upwards into her throat as she swallowed. It broke into several pieces in her mouth, each hard and large enough that she had to swallow them separately. She aided this achievement by gulping water from a glass by the bed, shaking her head to dissipate her revulsion at the taste and downing the rest of the glass, which she set down on the nightstand with a clink.

It was a relief that the taste began to fade quickly and so she lifted her feet, slid them under the quilt, smoothed her silk nightgown, and stretched out on her side, reaching for a book that was lying flat under the lamp.

After scanning a few pages without reading a word, she dropped the book to the floor and lay back against the pillows. Sleep seeped in with her breath. She thought longingly of her husband, of the great secrets and little truths, the one truth of him, that she had sought for all of their seven years.

In her dream, she passed through a wide red, multi-layered veil that seemed to be lit from within. At first, all she could see were women’s legs, coming into focus through the spider-silk fabric. The air was swirling with their voices, like a flock of birds. They were laughing, cooing like doves, sighing. They wore boots, pantyhose, stillettoes, anklets, leather sandals, sneakers.
Some were tanned and others had milky skin that never felt the sun’s eye. Some had bright-painted toenails. Some were caressed by sweeping skirts. Some were barefoot, calloused even.

“Ohhhh, look at him! He’s gorgeous,” one said as Leila was driven further into the dream.

“Come on, honey, come on, come on…” said another, laughing.

“Ahhhh, there, there…sweetie…”

“No, give him to me! I want him...”

“But you’ve already had a turn…”

For a while she was cocooned in their croonings as she seemed to be moving through a forest of legs, overhung by hundreds of females voices all slick with enticement and need.

Then, reaching the center of the crowd, she saw its focus. A heavyset brown puppy, with slick curls and soft, merry eyes, was sitting unperturbed by this flock of giant females. The little fellow was looking up, imploring, guileless, lolling its tongue. Every so often he would wag his tail and swipe his tongue over his own shiny nose, or lift a stubby paw and sniff the scented air.

“…You will find out what you already know…” said her friend’s voice.

“But I didn’t expect it to look like this,” Leila thought as she drifted from the dream without release.

Story: Trigger Happy

As my mother put the Ruger to my head, I remember thinking I was too young to die, like I was in a Western or a soap opera. But it’s weird that I can’t remember how old I was at the time.

Calm drew over me after the first few seconds and made me feel like I was not really there, even though I was praying that the hard circle of the barrel was at the end of an unloaded pistol, and that the nonexistent God up there would blind the harpy holding it, so she wouldn’t see the wet stain at my crotch. Digging the chipped fake nails of one hand into my arm, pressing the metal deep into my skin with the other, she hissed:

“Enough of your backtalk, you stupid little jackrabbit! Find that whiskey!”

Go to Hell was all I could think by then. Hell: the vacation destination where there was no Jack Daniel’s, no Jim Beam, no Old Crow.

“I– I don’t know where it is, Mom! Jesus!” Killing me won’t find it for you…

“Like I’m gonna believe that! My whiskey was in the God–damned kitchen this morning!”

Noon, as I remember it, had come and gone before she had even opened an eye; I had been to school and back, avoiding the back of the bus where Vito and Felipe sat with their black bullet-hole eyes.

Often I’d walk too far back, lost in thought, and sit within their reach, only to lose some trivial item (like my homework or whatever was disguised as lunch) when one of them or their sidekicks grabbed my coat, laughing at the sewn–up seams, or my frayed backpack, five years’ duct tape dangling in miserable strands. Petey and Ed, the twins from the apartment below, yelled from their window as I walked home whistling and smoking a cigarette from a pack I’d sneaked from my mother’s purse a few days before:

“Quit smoking! It’ll kill you!”

“Ryan! Come down by the tracks later!”

“Sure, if it’s OK with my mom.”

The door to our apartment was open slightly to show the hateful dark inside like a vacuum, and the whole apartment stank of stale clothing and ashtrays. Upstairs the radio was on, Howard Stern or Russ Martin jabbering the usual nerved–up crap, getting louder as I went up to my room. Venting, my dad used to call it— when he was still brave enough to say anything at all about Mom’s rages. When he still had his badge, when he still used to nudge his big gentle knuckles against my face with a wink, when he still used to lift me onto his knee after unwrapping the burgers or calzone he always brought home; before she hocked the car and all her jewelry, before she began to yell down the street at him, red around the eyes and spitting like a cat as he left, hunched in the patrol car; before Linda offered him some peace, for a change, and before he left us— without a word and without taking the Ruger.

“X–chromosomes are a curse and a blessing,” he had said on one of the few occasions I saw him after that.

“Yeah, and with her that would be just a curse,” was Linda's take on the situation.
Zero tolerance is a big fat joke, we have mega tolerance here, I remember a voice saying in my head as I felt her trigger finger tensing up in the stretched–out seconds before I must’ve passed out.

Story: Boxer Shorts

“…the neighbors are at it again…”


“…at what?”

“IT.” She jabs her index finger rapidly to and fro at the window. “That.”

He opens his eyes and squints in the vague light. “Dearykins, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.” Still clouded with sleep, he closes his eyes again with a dry yawn.

“For God’s sake. Their front yard. Come on over and see for yourself–– I mean, it’s awful.”

“Well, those snooty bitches at the housing association need something to fill those empty heads of theirs. It’s Sunday morning. Come back to bed. I’ll make some coffee in a bit.” He rolls over to one side, snatching the tobacco–brown comforter around him.

“Ohh Puh-leeeaze Pat! Just look out here! What planet are they on?” She is craning to peek through the window at the edge of the blind, and he squints at the sunlight that laser-etches the outline of her slender neck and pale shoulders.

“I dunno...” he says, as he sits up in bed, stretches, and rubs the back of his head. “...but I’m on planet lazy. Make me breakfast while you’re up, peaches...”

She makes a guttural sound – “nnnnggghhh” – and dips her head to stare at him from under crimped eyebrows. “They have painted concrete jockeys. On the wall, at the end of the garden path. Right…next…to…the…sidewalk! They really are one sandwich short of a picnic! D’they think we’ll all believe they packed a string of thoroughbreds into their yard?”

“It obviously entertains you. Maybe they’re just offering a bit of comic relief. It’s got to be better than the flashing–light flamingos. And surely you prefer jockeys to those crappy eagle-and-shield things they put by their front door a few months ago.”

She sits delicately on the edge of the bed and leans forward with her hands flat on the comforter.

“What happened to those?”

“I really have no idea. I know you think Josh and I took them hostage, but we’re innocent.” He grins and his brown eyes sparkle. “We were at the Cowboys game that night. We were the ones who told you they were missing.”

“I know, and then she came ringing on our doorbell. God she was a mess. If she wasn’t such a whining old bluehair, it would’ve been sad.” she grabs her red hair into a tangled ponytail and twists it like rope. “but it’s not a watertight alibi...” She drops the rope of hair, which swings loose in skeins.

He heaves himself out of bed and stretches again. She shuffles up the bed to reach a hairbrush from the nightstand, grabs her hair into a bunch, and brushes at the knots, picking gingerly through each one.

“So what do you think we should have for breakfast? An omelet might be nice, and we’ve probably still got some cantaloupe left.” He shoulders a heavy gray flannel bathrobe and knots the belt briskly.

“You know, Pat, that would be lovely. I’m starving...and it would distract me from the latest act of landscape terrorism.”

They laugh together as she climbs into a pair of boxer shorts and struggles into an oversized t-shirt. “Whodathunk there’d be a sleeper cell of home-decor mujahedeen right in our little sunny corner of suburbia? D’ya wanna call CBS or CNN first?” He follows her out of the bedroom and through the living room into the kitchen. “You beat the eggs. I’ll grate some cheese.”

“Go for broke, Pat. Call Fox news. Great padding between the ads and the Republican sound bites. You know, that crappy trivial head-candy that keeps the collective mind off the really important issues…” She opens the burnished stainless-steel fridge. “Want some passion-fruit nectar? There’s fresh orange juice too.”

“My, my, I never knew you were such a media sophisticate, my dear Andrea...” He stops, steps back, and stares at her with an open-mouthed parody of amazement. “Wait! Divine inspiration, bulletin from the muses…! I have the perfect touch! The essential comic note that makes filler news coverage truly memorable!”

She looks at him suspiciously with an egg balanced in each hand. “You weirdo. Megalomaniac.”

“No, seriously! My flame–haired darling, you’re wearing boxer shorts...”

“What the hell are you talking about?” She cracks the eggs into a glass bowl. “Two eggs? Three? None? On a plate? In the face?”

“Three. This is a three-egg day. On a plate, there’s a good girl. Think I’m gonna give Josh a call. He said Mikey had already grown out of his Spider-Man boxers, and anyway now he’s onto The Hulk. Maybe I can get him to bring a couple pairs over before Sally gets on the Salvation Army thing again....”

She pauses with a grave look on her face. “Wow. Kids’ boxers. You are a genius. I’ll bet they’d be the perfect size. Ask him to grab some super-glue on his way over...late this evening. I think we’ll need it.”

“He can stop there after he stops at the bottle shop,” Pat smirks as he picks up the phone.
Andrea wakes up the next morning, lying on the couch, with a horrible hangover. Her head is on Pat’s shoulder and wisps of her hair drift from side to side in the moving air. He has one hand posed as if to scratch his hairy chest through a button that has popped open on his shirt, the other resting in a soft grip on her upper thigh. Three shot glasses bearing slogans (Warning–obnoxious drunk in progress, Pat’s Bar, and Instant Asshole! Just Add Alcohol!) accompany two bottles of Patron tequila (one empty) and several mangled lime slices on the glass coffee table. A square box of Godiva chocolate is open on the floor, surrounded by twinklings of foil and balled–up brown confectionery cups.

She opens her eyes, which are swollen to slits, and looks from side to side as the room adjusts into focus. Then she moves Pat’s hand from her leg and lies down, her body creaking against the leather sofa. She wriggles a little at the cold from the fan and stares across the room at the two empty easy chairs and the big recliner.

Her eyes blink slowly, scan the room, blink again, and then fix on the recliner. “Oh no! Joshua drove home after all those shots…”

The sound of laughter drifts in through the open window. She heaves herself back upright, rubs her eyes with the pads of her fingers and looks at the floor with blank, watery eyes.

After this desultory struggle to recuperate, she pushes herself out of the sofa with a grunt and pads over to the window, stuffing her hands into the sleeves of her sweatshirt, and squints across the small front lawn, where the morning traffic of parents and children makes its way to the elementary school at the end of the street. She watches two mothers and five children passing the house next door. One woman has her hand over her mouth, suppressing a smile. The other pauses with one hand on her hip, staring and laughing. Two of the children, little girls with jolly beribboned hair, are loitering next to the mothers, their elfin faces wavering between smiles and scowls. The three boys are standing close together, staring at the concrete figures on either side of the neighbors’ garden path, their eyes directed groinwards to the red–and–blue cotton boxer shorts bearing the unmistakable motif of Spider–Man. The words “hey,” “underwear,” and “lookit!” separate from the indecipherable chatter as Andrea strains to hear more.

She darts to the sofa, leans over the back, and shakes Pat’s left shoulder so that his head lolls from side to side until he snorts and opens his eyes. Then she leans closer with her mouth almost touching his ear, and whispers “C’mon you. It’s time to get up. We’ve got to get the car in for a service this morning.”

He makes a muffled snorting sound and rubs the palm of his hand over his face, then pokes the sleep gunk out of the corners of his eyes. “Mmmph. Close the curtains, honey.”

She yanks his earlobe. “C’mon, you! The kids are walking by on their way to school. People are laughing. Come see!” She pokes his upper arm, twisting her finger around.

He shivers, opens his eyes wide, and tips his head back to look at her upside–down. “You don’t say! Well I’d better take a look at this spectacle.”

Grinning through the hangover fog, he gets to his feet and shuffles to the window on unsteady feet. He peers out for a few seconds and then bursts into a baritone belly–laugh at the giggling children and the parents muffling their amusement as they motion to their youngsters to hurry to school.

Andrea nudges him. “Laughter…the best medicine.”

“Lordy Lordy. We did it! Weren’t WE brave?”

“Yeah. It’s amazing you two crazies didn’t get caught. I’ll bet Agatha heard you sniggering with those big bat ears of hers.” She smirks one more time at the little boxer shorts vibrating in the breeze and then turns from the window.

“I tell you, Andrea, it was a thrill–and–a half. And cheaper than Six Flags. D’ya think they know yet…?”

“I guess not. She’d–a been out here at first light to take evasive action. Or bash you over the head with a Reader’s Digest compilation.” She walks across the room to the hall and begins to climb the stairs.

“What makes you think she’d suspect us?” He follows her, holding his hands out with the palms upward.

“Don’t be a dick, Pat. They must’ve heard you.”

“No, you! You were cackling like a witch! Mind you they are probably deaf. Old farts like that.”
As they enter the bedroom, the doorbell rings.

“Avon calling,” Andrea says as she grabs her toothbrush. “You get the door. I’ll lurk at the top of the stairs and mock you afterward.”

Pat adjusts his jeans. “Do you think she’ll notice I’ve been wearing these all night?”
“Inevitably. Go answer the door!”

The bell rings several more times as Pat trots downstairs and snatches the door open. A white, veined hand shoots out and waves a torn pair of red and blue boxer shorts inches from his face.

“Oh, good morning, Agatha. Is it time for the church rummage sale already? Let me check with Andrea and see what we’ve put aside this year.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous,” Agatha splutters, flinging the torn scrap to the floor. “You know perfectly well what this is about.”

Pat clasps his hand over his chin and tilts his head to one side as he fixes round, frank eyes on his neighbor. “I am sorry, Agatha –you seem very upset. But I have no clue what you’re talking about. We were in bed by eleven. Early to bed, early to rise…”

Agatha twiddles at her watch with yellowing fingernails, her jaws and mouth in tremulous motion.

“Are you saying you know nothing about this?” She extends a shaky, bony finger towards the ravaged undergarment. “Some… some vandal used this item to… to deface our new ornaments! Those sculptures were custom-painted!”

“Oh dear, how terrible for you! What a to-do,” Pat muses, glancing up the stairs to wink at Andrea as she peeks through the bedroom door and rolls her eyes.

“What should I do? Do you think I should call the police?” Agatha says, turning her filigree wedding ring around and around, staring into the distance with her milky eyes.

“No, no – I can see why you are concerned, but I wouldn’t worry about it. It’s probably just kids. Harmless stuff.” He tilts his head to look her in the eye and engages her attention with raised brows and a close-mouthed smile.

“I heard laughter in the night,” she mutters. “Such an invasion of our rights! And after the theft of our patriotic shield! You know that was taken from our front doorstep?”

“Terrible, terrible,” Pat says with a long sigh, and sucks his lips between his teeth as he notices Andrea grimacing and slashing her index finger across her throat.”

Agatha pauses for a moment, her restless jaws still in motion, and then walks back down the garden path. Pat bends to retrieve the boxer shorts and tosses them towards the staircase with a flourish.

“Neurotic old hen,” Andrea growls from somewhere upstairs.

A few weeks later, a new ornamental modification greets the neighborhood children as they walk to school the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.

The jockey on the left is wearing a large, florid, super–detailed rubber turkey–head mask. Its warty blue wattles and baggy red comb are a garish contrast against the jockey’s painted hunter–green shirt. The turkey has been crafted with an expression of unspeakable stupidity on its face.

The jockey on the right has an overripe pumpkin jammed onto his head. Pumpkin innards have slipped down through the hole in the bottom to festoon the figure with slimy skeins that hang with seeds, moving slightly in a gentle early morning breeze. The artist has omitted any indication that the pumpkin might be a Jack O’Lantern.

“We have secret allies,” Pat said as he climbed into his Audi TT that morning. “They beat us to the punch. You could tell fortunes in that pumpkin’s entrails.”

“So what was it again…an Indian and a pilgrim? I think this is funnier than your intended contribution, Hiawatha.” Andrea says, as she kisses him through the window. “Maybe you’ll get in there for Christmas…if Aggie and Ronnie don’t change their décor before then.”

“Well I knew we were outclassed as soon as I went outside last night. You can see we are up against great talent. Bye Hon. Don’t be late,” he takes her hand and shakes it before backing the car onto the street.

A lanky boy, with a red ski hat jammed down over his ears, pauses on his way to school and leans back on his bike, arms folded and head to one side, considering the jockeys for a moment.
The boy whips his backpack off his shoulders and unzips it in a single deft movement. He reaches inside, pulls out two battered plastic corn–cobs, and jams them onto the upraised, beckoning hand of each jockey, anchoring each in place with a gobbet of chewing-gum before pedaling away, backpack swinging from one shoulder. Andrea walks to the garage with a chuckle, noticing neither the bleak gap in the curtains of an upstairs window next door, nor the smudge of a pale face that lurks behind it.

On Christmas eve, Pat has found the temptation of a pair of glow-in-the-dark red noses impossible to resist, especially since they have company for festive cocktails. Sally and Josh, whisky in hand, leer through the window as Pat creeps out to the jockeys and fixes the noses in place. He leaves them set to blink in the dark. Much more fun than not blinking, he thinks as he strides up the path.

As he eases the front door shut and bursts into laughter, Andrea looks up from the hearth rug, chomping Christmas cake. “I wonder if anyone will add to your little gesture?”

“You meat-head! Perhaps you should leave out the super glue next time…” Joshua adds.
Sally clasps her ponytail in one hand and makes a fake-serious face. “No! They might fall off! Then all your mischief would be for nothing!”

“Valentine’s day could be really interesting, you guys… say, your brother reckons Chrissie’s got some pretty hot little numbers in that lingerie drawer of hers…” Pat adds, with a twinkly smirk.
“Yeah, some a that Fredericks of Hollywood shit,” laughs Joshua, as Andrea glowers at them both.

“You’re both pervs. Dirty bastards,” she says, throwing a raisin at Pat.

“Hey!” Pat exclaims, extending an upraised index finger, “you’ve really got something there. How about kinky? You know, French maid and Nazi stormtrooper, or what about that woman Barbara up the street whose daughter is supposed to be a topless dancer down at the Millionaire Club?”

“Oh God, I’d hate to see what she puts out for the church rummage sale…”

“Now now, Sally. You’re just jealous,” Andrea whispers.

“Up yours,” laughs Sally.

“Damn, we could have so much fun with this,” Joshua says as he leans back into one of the leather glider armchairs, rocking slightly, his eyes reflecting the Christmas tree lights.

Pat leaps over to the desk in the corner and whips a notebook and pen from a drawer “All right! Brainstorm! Lotsa holidays to plan for!”

“Christ Pat, I suppose you’re going to put it all in your Outlook calendar,” laughs Andrea. “Grab me another Gentleman Jack while you’re up, sweety.”

“Ok – there’s idea number one. Organize. Anyone else for more booze?” Sally and Joshua raise their empty glasses, rattling the ice, and he collects them together in one hand with a clink.
Returning from the kitchen, Pat settles next to Andrea and sets the notebook on the coffee table. “Right, Valentine’s day. Kinky.”

“Split-crotch panties!” Yells Sally, her face flushed.

“Settle down – you’d never notice the split,” Joshua adds.

“Yeah, you’ll have to put yours out for the Salvation Army, Sal” Laughs Andrea.

“Fine. Fine. French maid and stormtrooper. Check.” Pat scribbles rapidly with his Mont Blanc pen.

“There’s new year first. Grim reapers. We’ve got plastic scythes and hooded cloaks from the Halloween party,” Andrea reminds him, scratching her nose.

“Ha! Easter. Bugs Bunny and Foghorn Leghorn masks. Mikey will donate his if we drive by so he can see.”

“Awesome. Check Easter, Josh!”

“I know, I know… How about Uncle Sam and Osama for 4th July?” Sally claps her hand over her mouth and rolls her eyes around the room.

“Christ, that’s tasteless. Wonder if we dare?” Andrea stares at Pat, hoping for a sign of increased courage.

Pat swigs his whisky and scribbles down the idea. “check July 4th. Good one.”

“All right, beat this,” Joshua declares as he sets down his empty glass, missing the coaster and retrieving the glass before it topples. “Martin Luther King Day.”

“…No, please…” Andrea is lying on her back, rippling with laughter.

“I’m all ears.” Pat positions the pen on the notepad.

“One in a KKK hood, and get this…” he pauses for oratory effect. “And one in blackface.”

“Oh party foul!! They’ll have a stroke! That’d be a hate crime!” Sally yells.

“It’s only a hate crime if they’re Black. Check MLK day.” Pat drops the pen onto the pad, looking around the room at his friends.

Much later, long after Joshua and Sally have succumbed to their hosts’ insistence that they take a cab home, a new shade of pale comes to Agatha’s face as she looks out through the window with the first hint of dawn. The noses are blinking like little beacons, casting a cheery glow onto the beards and antlers that someone has attached to the heads of their statuary.

“They’ve done it again,” she mutters, plucking at the neck of her powder-blue chiffon gown.

“Never mind, dear, it’s only a bit of harmless fun,” Ronald said as he takes her chilly hand and clutches it. “Merry Christmans anyway.”

“Mmmhmpph,” she snaps, snatching her hand away, and yanks the curtains closed, knocking an imitation-rococo angel from a windowsill to the hardwood floor with a tinkle.

Story: Yard Work

There was so much work to do in the yard, so much work. Fall was the worst. Some days, he did not know where or how it would end. Big drifts of leaves grew like mold on the deck, by the fence, by the gate, by the back door, by the shed. Weeds got tall and hid the plants from the sun, choked the light from the house. The big tree dropped seed pods on the lawn and the roof. Leaves and pods fell in the pool so that it turned brown. The wind blew dust and leaves and pods all over, which clogged the drains. He did not like to clean drains at all. The smell made him feel sick.

His wife stayed in the house. She would be slumped in a chair with a book or on the phone. Dust got in the house and lay thick all over, but she would sit and smoke. She would sigh and get up to go to bed, or she would get big plates of junk to eat, or just lie on the couch with glazed, half-closed eyes. At times she slept all day and all night. She did not seem to see the cat hair on her clothes or the gray water and plates and bits of food in the sink. She did not see how her flesh hung from her like paste.

He was the one who put out the trash, washed the plates, swept the floor. She was sick and had no strength. He knew she would be lost now, if he was not there for her. She wept and it would make her eyes red. He knew she loved him. He knew she saw how hard he worked and how he could not get through it all, he was sure she saw him as he worked. He felt her gaze on his lean, strong back and legs as he sat with locks of his steel-gray hair in his face, damp with sweat even though the wind was cool.

But there was work, more work. The first thing was to mow. So he would mow the long grass that grew and grew, and the thick blades would mince leaves and seed pods that lay on the ground, so that it made mulch that he left where it lay. That will be good for the earth when it rains, and then the grass will be strong and green.

He liked the noise when he mowed. It was a deep growl a bit like a bear. He would sit on top of the bear noise with a beer in his hand and mow and watch the plants and birds. Or he would see folks go by and wave without a word. He would watch bugs hop out of the way as the fat wheels went by them. Some would take off and fly to a safe place. He would smile at the green June bugs that flew a short way with their weak wings, then gave up and fell on the ground or grabbed a leaf or stick and hung on to get their strength up. You guys are just too fat. You should work out more, he would think as he growled by in a spray of minced grass and leaves.

Once he killed a mouse as he mowed and a small smear of red was left on the lawn as the big blades whirred and the wheels passed by. When he drank all of his beer, he would take a break and drive the truck down to the store for another twelve-pack. It was this way each time he mowed.

When he mowed close to the house he’d see her there in the big soft chair. She did not change her clothes or brush her hair. She ate grapes and scratched at her arms. At times, he’d stop and go in to tell her to put some of her skin cream on, but she would look at him with her lost face and pick at her feet or her scalp until he left. He would pat her arm or take her hand and she would look at the floor. Time was scarce, so he kept on with the yard work. There was so much to do. If he got a break from mowing he would take the chain saw and cut some of the limbs from that big tree that made so much mess each year. He would cut the limbs with the most leaves and seed pods. Then he would cut up the wood and stack it by the drive. If he could find the time next week, he would buy and plant new shrubs to make the house look loved once
more. But he first must mow.

The house was set on a large plot that once had a stall and fenced place for a horse. They had bought it when they still walked a young path of dreams. It had herbs and green beans and corn, pear and plum trees, bright blooms in each place you looked. There had been a hen house too, when they first moved in. He liked hens and would have used the coop. But there was no time left when the dark came and he still had more grass to mow, so he had torn down the coop and sown grass seed. It was sad to think of the fat, tame hens that could have pecked and clucked and laid their smooth brown eggs there. He thought of the kids they did not have, their small hands filled with plump brown eggs.

One day he went out and found a new job. He had not worked in years after he sold his big old Mack. Those things are worth as much as a house and he had long since paid off the bank. He liked the big, wide, straight roads that cut through hills and swept from state to state. He liked the big bear growl of the trucks. He liked to stop and eat and rest, and make small talk with those he met. He liked to move and not stay put too long.

As the day grew old and the air cooled, he would point the truck at the end of the road and drive as far as it took him. He smiled at the thought of what he’d said when he took the job; that they could keep him on the road all day and all night if they pleased. That, and the growl of the truck as he drove, was just fine with him.

Story: Brother Death

Davy had caught a grasshopper. He held it in a cage made from his fingers and looked at it through the tiny space between his thumbs. It had a face like a leper’s, he thought, remembering the lesson from Sunday school that morning. Miss Collis spat white flecks when she talked and she had big square choppy teeth and flappy skin under her chin, like a chicken. She went on and on about Jesus blessing all these sick people and a loony. She even said there was this Lazzer–something feller who got up and made his bed after he had died because Jesus told him to.

He knew Mum would say not to talk about sick and dead people at the dinner table because it puts people off their food, and that loonies were Not For Polite Conversation. And he knew she would say she wished Jesus would make him make his bed even if he had to raise him from the hereafter to do it.

"It was about how Jesus made all these lepers and dead blokes and blind people get better,” he’d told Mum on the way home across the common, when she’d asked her children what they learned about in Sunday school that day. He hadn’t told her about the bed bit.

"Very nasty,” she’d said, “but it was nice of him to make them all better, don’t you think? Look, watch out for the road now. Hold my hand.” She’d jumped off the grassy bank just where the little beaten path ended, near the railway bridge, and scurried across the newly–surfaced road in her soft, flat shoes, grasping Davy and Emma by the forearms. Davy didn’t tell his mother how he’d watched through the window of the church hall to see if talking about lepers and dead people had put Miss Collis off her coffee and her McVitie’s Chocolate Homewheats. She’d probably spat brown flecks after eating four of them.

He’d made faces at his sister as she told their mother about Jesus blessing little children and old poor widows, while she unlocked the back door and let them into the kitchen. “Stoppit Davy. That’s very naughty indeed,” Mum had said, grabbing his arm very hard.

The dead blokes were the ones that he wanted to know about the most, but the lepers’ hands and feet fell off, and sometimes their noses, so they were interesting too. There were pictures of them in the church, with envelopes for sending money to something called Oxfam. He wondered if the hands and things just fell off all of a sudden, or if they went all shriveled and brown first, like leaves. Perhaps they had special cleaning ladies that went round after and picked up all the hands and put them in rubbish bags. Maybe they wore little white hats like nurses, or green aprons with Keep Jerusalem Tidy on them. Perhaps Jesus had to go around and find the lost, brown hands before he could say “hocus pocus fishbones chokus” (like Uncle Alan pretending to steal your nose) and make the hands stick on again. Maybe Jesus preferred it when the lepers kept their hands or feet after they’d fallen off, just in case. He wondered if the hands worked straight away, or if they had to un-shrivel for a bit first.

Mum always made egg sandwiches on Sundays and sometimes she gave them each a bag of crisps before she shoved them outside to play. They were allowed to walk to the woods at the end of the road, but no further. “Now look after your sister,” he’d heard Mum call as they’d walked through the back gate, the taste of egg still fresh in their mouths. They often did as they had on this day, and went across the railway into the field and the scattered copses beyond. It was more interesting there and besides, Davy knew the way home.

The grasshopper was trying to squeeze through the grimy bars of his fingers, wriggling and tickling against his palms. His sister began to peer at his enclosing hands with her lips slightly pursed and her head to one side. She’d lost interest in the bright-colored leaves and the daisies and clover that still clung to the diminishing days; Davy held her attention easily by holding his hands close to his eyes and staring inside.

“Emmeeee…” he wheedled, “Look what I found!"

"Lemme see! Is it a butterfly?” She sat upright and widened her eyes a little. “C’mon Davy. What you got?”

"Guess,” he said, holding his hands motionless, raising his chin a little. “An eary-wig? A daddy-longlegs…?” His mouth flattened in a thin smirk.

She shook her head. “No. I’ll only be wrong and then you’ll do something nasty.”

"G’waaan! I’ll give yer a clue!”

She folded her arms and shook her head. “No, no, Davy."

"Wrong! Ha ha! It’s got legs like chicken drumsticks,” he said. “But it’s not a chicken! Here! Shazam! have it!” He opened his hand and the hopper leaped out like a green flea and landed on Emma’s leg.

“Eeeee! Daveeey! Gedddidoffameee!” She brushed frantically at her leg for several seconds after the grasshopper had sprung into the long grass and bracken. “I hate creepy-crawlies. It could’ve gone in my hair, you big stupid twit.”

The grasshopper had reappeared, perched on a sapling branch a few feet away. It watched them through its blank leper eyes. Davy smiled and looked at his feet. “Yeah, then it would’ve got all squashed and its guts would’ve been everywhere, all slimy and green and in your hair. Ha ha ha!” He paused and then said, “Anyway, it’s not a creepy–crawly, stupid. It’s a leapy weapy.”
Emma snapped her head away from him and grabbed at a wilting posy of daisies beside her on the ground. She had a murky grass stain on the heel of her hand. “If you put anything in my hair, I’ll tell Mum” she spat, shaking her twin ponytails with her head tilted upwards so they swept back and forth across her shoulders, the bouncing nut-brown ringlets catching the dappled sunlight. Davy laughed, his small freckled face flushed a little from the humid warm day and the scent of new grass. He closed his eyes to thick-lashed slits and rolled his gray gaze sideways to his sister, smirking.

"Derek Haydon showed me a log with mushrooms on it where there’s a whole big lot of roly polies. We’re going to put loads of them in a bag and pretend they’re sweets.”

"You did that to Melissa Sperry at Christmas with worms. She put her hand in and they were all cold and wiggly and she screamed. I couldn’t eat my dinner after that.” She pouted, shook her head reflexively and scrunched up her forehead, but her mouth refused her efforts to restrain it and she spat a pizzicato of giggles through her mask of disdain. She could hear ‘Lissa’s child-star scream sometimes when she shut her eyes at night, just before she fell asleep.

"Ems, what do you think they did with all the hands that fell off the lepers?"

"Are you on that leper thing again? Mum’s gonna think you’re a nutter y’know.”

The clouds were starting to turn pink. Several busy gatherings of midges hovered near them. Davy twiddled a finger in his ear and said, “C’mon, let’s go home. It’s prob’ly suppertime. I don’t like midges - they make your head itchy. Anyway there’s cartoons on the telly soon.” He got up and moved away from the grassy spot where they had been, without looking back at Emma as she jumped up and ran to catch up with him. The trees were beginning to close behind them, blanketed in the mushroom smell of evening, as she hurried after her brother.

The grass came up to their waists and tickled at their bare legs and arms. They walked out of the little copse and across the wide field towards the hedgerow. Seed-heads caught in their shoelaces. Emma stooped repeatedly to scratch at her shins and around the tops of her socks.
Davy tugged at a grass stem as he passed, then put it in his mouth. He chewed like a rabbit and then tossed the stem over his shoulder.

“You should pick clover and suck the little bits of the flower or something, because that’s how bees make honey.” Emma grabbed a grass stem that looked like a tiny tree on a stick.
"Here’s a tree in Summer…” she said, thrusting the tree-shaped grass into Davy’s face. She pinched at the base of the grass head, where it began to look like a tree, and stripped the seeds upwards, leaving a bare stem with a few tiny skeletal branches behind it. She proffered this to her brother: “here’s a tree in Winter…” Then she held the pinched grass seed in front of her like a tiny posy, smirking with one side of her mouth: “Here’s a bunch of flowers…"

"…and here’s some April showers,” Davy sighed. “Go on then. Throw them at me.” Emma glared at him as she threw the memento of a stolen moment at his head, then looked ahead of them, locating the small place where they could slip between the fence rails, through the hedge, and take a shortcut home along to the woods on the other side of the railway. This was the best way home, but Mum and Dad would be cross if they knew. “The railway’s dangerous,” she thought. Mum had been funny about it ever since that boy was hurt when some kids put stones onto the rails.

They were quiet until they had climbed the fence.

"Davy, can you still make that big noise with a piece of grass? That’s brilliant: it’s like a goose noise.” Their feet were crunching on the stones banked under the railway sleepers.

Davy paused momentarily to select a blade of the optimal width and texture, snapped it off, placed it carefully between his thumbs, his tongue folded and pushed down over his lower lip so that she could see the tiny taste buds. Glancing over at Emma, he took a long breath, threw back his head, and pressed his clasped hands fervently to his lips, pausing for a few seconds before blowing into the tiny space between his thumbs, which caused the grass blade to emit a loud, wavering squawk. He teetered along on tiptoe for a few steps, moving his cupped hands in a trembling motion for maximum vibrato effect, until his breath finally gave out. A few crows continued the hue and cry before the air settled.

They were approaching the place where they crossed the railway line when Davy slowed to a funereal pace. He stared across the tracks, through a floridly overgrown garden, along a straight, moss-fuzzed garden path made of worn lobster-red bricks, and up into the bleakness that stared back at them from behind diamond-shaped window panes. Each window was set deep into uneven plaster, overshadowed by renegade roses and vagrant vines, uniformly decrepit.

“See that house up there?” They were standing near where the railway line cut through the bright green wood and into the farmland beyond, an unbroken swath to London. The house was tall and white, set back from the railway, at the top of a slight incline, patterned crookedly with tarred black beams, partially draped in clinging ivy. Its tiled roof was smattered with bright green and gray lichen. Under its eaves, hunched swallows’ nests awaited the return of their occupants.

"It’s a half timbered house.” Davy continued. “Dad said mum and him wanted to buy it about a month ago.”

"That’s the one that has a stable for a pony,” she said with a gasp.

"Yeah, and Mum said the windows are leaded lights. That’s a funny thing to call windows. They’re dark.”

She shrugged, “Wonder why they didn’t buy it? It’s lots bigger than our house.”

"Something about those blasted developers again.” He gave her a knowing look.

Their eyes returned to the sloping garden path. The chain–link gate was low on its hinges, hanging open. The fence on either side of it was barely visible under layers of clematis and convolvulus. Small, white bracket fungus jutted from a ragged tree stump in front of the fence. There was a cluster of silver birch trees set starkly in a dark corner on one side of the garden.

“So what about it?” said Emma, folding her arms.

“Chris Bentley said the old geezer who lives up there is a wizard. He’s got skeletons and things up there.” Davy’s face was red from the fresh air and sun, shiny like an apple. He smiled without showing his teeth. “He must be a wizard, cos he’s got a long gray beard and lots of white hair, and his voice is like growling. Chris said. Some people said they saw faces with big long teeth at the windows. He talks to himself too."

Then he said that Nigel Browne had told him the wizard geezer kept a dead person in there, wrapped in a blanket in the freezer. He said Nigel heard his mum tell Mrs. Franklin she’d heard it was his brother. Wrapped in a blanket and some old newspaper, wedged in with some stuff called dry ice.

Emma suddenly thought of the part in Anne of Green Gables about the lamb of fire, with its head cut off hanging from a strip of skin. She was still scared of that, especially at the bend in the stairs, or outside the loo when she opened the door in the dark. Perhaps this charred thing was the wizard’s pet, smelling of burned wool and blood. She thought of a gray blanket, with a green stripe across it, like the army ones that Dad gave them to use in the tent in summer. It would be stuffed into the freezer, covering a big lump of something. It would have frost on it, like the peas and ice cream. A little bit of her would see the freezer opening and the lamb standing by it in the kitchen, after bedtime, that night. It would make a husky, coughing bleat and exhale wet smoke through its upside–down nostrils, and the freezer in the kitchen would open and a blanketed figure within would sit up slowly, spilling crumbs of ice…

"That’s a load of old rubbish, Davy and you know it.” She snapped.

"Ooooooooo…scaredy cat! Think the dead geezer’s gonna getcha?” He reached towards her with a crooked index finger. “He’ll be coooooold and he’ll rattle his booones…."

"Shuddup! You stupid git!” Her face was taut and she stood firm as he waggled the old–dead–man finger in her face. “Go and find out then if you’re so brave!”

"You can come with me if you like,” he laughed. “Do you think there would be maggots on him, like on that squirrel we saw in the road? Little frozen maggots! Maggot ice lollies! Go on, weedy! You’re too scared!”

She shook her head with her eyes shut so tight it made her face ache. “I’m not too scared. I’ll tell Mum!"

"Are. Weedy girl.”

“ Shuddup Davey. Shuddup. I’m not scared. There’s nothing there anyway ‘cept an old grumpy bloke...What if the old bloke is there?” Emma’s voice was small as it tumbled from her mouth.
"I don’t care. He’s prob’ly just an old crumbly. Prob’ly walks all bent like the biddies in church. I can run very fast. Easy peasy.”

"But you can’t get in. It’s got no door. Look – there’s no door.”

The path had no visible end; it disappeared abruptly into the weeds and roses. She was right: there was no visible porch, no gate, no door. Davy tutted and sneered, rolling his eyes. “It’s one of those operational illusions like on the magic shows."

"What are you going to do…? What if he’s got a big dog? Davy…”

"Stoppit. Weedy girl. Wait and see. Just wait here. Don’t call out for me. I’ll be back in a minute.” He stepped carefully over one of the tracks and onto the oily sleeper. She followed him over the railway and down the stone bank to the narrow beaten footpath on the other side. He looked back at her. “You can come too if you want, Emmy. Emmy Wemmy.”
She reached to take his hand, and at the instant her cold fingertips met his damp, outstretched hand, she recoiled, knowing he would drag her there with him. “No, no…I want to stay here.” He snorted and whirled around again. “Well it’s your lookout then, cowardy custard.”
He slipped into the dusk and vanished through the gate and up the path, leaving a shrinking trail of sound as overgrown plants swished against his calves. Emma strained to keep her eyes on him, but the blue–pink dusk stole him before she could focus through it. She backed to the edge of the path and sat down slowly on a patch of grass, tucking her dress under her legs to keep the grass from tickling. As the pink faded from the light and the blue became stronger, she waited for his footsteps or the rustle of disturbed plants. There was no breeze. The sounds of birdsong slowly died away around her until dampening silent air surrounded her and the night waited for the nightingale, lit by a low–slung half–moon above the silhouette of the house. Beyond, she could hear the rush of cars that spread from the yellow haze of streetlights and she wondered when the next train would come because she had never been by the railway when a train went past.

She sat and she waited, staring up at the black shape, fingering the grasses and rubbing at her knees. The ground was lumpy and her bottom was sore, but if she moved, she would lose her awareness of the things around her. She thought of Mum, wearing her dark green apron in the kitchen, the creamy light over the gravy–splodged cooker, the misted windows, and Dad getting out of the car in the damp evening chill with his battered briefcase. She thought of the dog and the cat moving around his feet as if trying to trip him up. She remembered she and Davy needed to have baths before bed, that Dad was reading to them from The Chronicles of Narnia, and that things that come out of the freezer are sometimes so cold they stick to you. She wanted to get up and run home before the little paths that led there were finally taken by the full–blown dark, but the bit of her that wanted to stay germinated, grew, took nourishment from every little sound, and choked out her will to leave.

Eventually, she reached into her pocket and found a daisy chain coiled there. She pulled it out gingerly and felt the warm, damp stems and eyelash petals in the dark. This small remnant of the day soothed her so that she ceased to look blankly around her at passing moth wings or nearby rustling leaves, or to wonder what if Davy never came back.

He came careening through the gate, with long wild leaps like an antelope, just as Emma was putting the daisy chain on her head, patting it into place on her disheveled hair. Davy laughed through the hoarse catching of breath in his throat and tried to snatch it, but she ducked, jumped up, and then ran around him in a dizzying circle. He caught her sleeve and ran around her until they ended up whirling and spinning and catching their breath until they fell over on the path. He was panting heavily, wiping his nose and eyes. The daisy chain was broken on the ground and forgotten as they picked themselves up, sauntered on along the path without looking behind them, and melted into the woods, staying close together. They thought of Mum’s shepherd’s pie and her you’re late! face, and hoped she hadn’t cooked Brussels’ sprouts that night.

Behind them, the lopsided gate swung shut with a click, and slow, heavy footfalls bore a stooped figure up towards the house, where its vague shape vanished into the fleshy roses obscuring the blind end of the path. A white terrier followed after pausing to look around at the disappearing children, a red rubber ball in its mouth.

One Dry Summer

I think it has been over a year since we had normal rainfall here in the DFW area. I've never seen the weather as spiteful before. It is as if we were guarded by a gigantic shriveled hand, holding rain at bay.

It's remarkable that there have not been more wildfires especially in our neighborhood, but I think people are hanging in there and taking the rules seriously, for the most part, even though nobody likes it. Not that anyone in their right mind would burn anything when the temperature never goes below 80.

A two-year drought is a remarkable experience to live through; an undramatic, creeping strangulation of the environment that makes news purely because of its duration. There's nothing to goggle at in shriveled plants; no rubbernecker problem with the early-falling leaves and tessellated ground. It's not sensational like tornadoes and floods. But it's destructive all the same.

This would be the very year when we are establishing six young trees. Irony and successful landscaping in Texas don't mix. While I think my trees will make it

Fancy Creating a Blog and Then Not Writing In It.

Enough said?

But there is nothing like the presence of a vast, empty writing instrument for giving me writer's block. It's one of those ironies that given a good mechanism for communication, I clam up. For a while, anyway.

This is probably nowhere near pithy enough to make a good kickoff, but it will do. Not writing a word, as Queen Victoria might have said, simply will not do...