Plastic Farm Animals
I turned sixty-six last week and thought, “With what I know now, I wish I’d been there for my twenty-year-old self.” Could I go back in time, I imagine our conversation would go something like this: (Twenty-year-old me) So, you’re me in 46 years, eh? (Sixty-six-year-old me) Yep I can almost see me in you. […]
My mother says I tested at 130 in the ’60s when I.Q tests were de rigueur, but I don’t put much stock in that. And, if she is correctly pulling up that specific number for this particular child — who could keep track with six little geniuses — I think it was a fluke. I’ve […]
Consciousness felt its way through the weave of the screens with the crow cries. Nana’s bare feet plucked at the linoleum downstairs, moving toward the kitchen door where the dogs stood, fanning the air. I lay still, eyes closed. There was something else, an image, a niggling whisper. Remembering how I had wrapped my final […]
I caught up with Bob Armantrout outside Playa Mexico the day before his sixtieth birthday He’d driven to the coastal town of Emerald Isle with his wife to celebrate at the beach. He didn’t have to point out that this is the absolutely best time of year to be dipping in the Atlantic. I asked […]
I’m going off the road, I think, my heart pitching to the beat of a noise I can’t identify. “Knock, knock, knock, knock, knock”, so loud it drowns out all rational thought. “Do you hear this?” I shout into my phone, shoving it towards the window. “Yes, I hear it,” Bob answers, “Calm down so […]