"Oh, Human Bondage!"

Read it here.

"He in His Cups."

Read it here.

He Comes When He Comes

I've been informed that "My Last Good Year," published by Juked earlier this year, has been nominated by Juked for inclusion in the 2011 Best of the Net anthology. Keep your fingers crossed!

Yes, There Will Be Riots

There's too much to say because so much time has passed. They look at one another, amazed, and they lie. You haven't changed at all, they both say but, of course, they have changed! They've aged, lost hair and muscle tone, they've thickened or slackened. Time's march. It will sadden him later, the difference between then and now.

Haven't I missed you, dreamed about you? Tell me everything, fill me in on all the days that have past since I last saw you? Who were you with? What did you see?

Some three thousand days. There's too much to say and so they say nothing. There have been dreams in which there had been this silence. In one, they grappled. In another, one poured a bath. No words were spoken.

Oh, dread. Time's march. Yes, there will be riots somewhere and injustices, car accidents, good and bad weather. Turn around and look behind you and time stretches out, your long shadow with everything in it, and somewhere in all of it he is sitting on a bench, holding a golf club and softly beating the dirt with it, and there are his knees which you will never forget, ever.

A Mini Review of Meet Me On The Moon.

Read it here. (Use the handy Haydon's Ferry Review link to go directly to review.)

It's Friday, Not the End of the World, Okay?

There's a couple in the parking lot, making out beside a truck. He's wearing a blue polo shirt, khaki shorts, baseball hat turned backwards. She's wearing a sundress, has blonde hair. They are going to Shady Grove for lunch, I guess. I watch them walk off, wondering if he has an erection. I would like to think that he did, and that he was happy to be walking around with it, half-hoping people would notice.

The dog sleeps on two pillows, one on top of the other, in a way that makes her look incredibly pampered.

My palms sweat and itch like they did when I ended up in the hospital. What are they trying to tell me?

I tell the dog I love her very much. I tell her she is the sweetest thing, that she and Daddy are the best things in my life. When I take out the trash, I tell her I'll be right back, to assure her she's not being abandoned. Maybe she doesn't really care. When I check the mail I say the same thing. I like to think it means something to her, the way "walk" and "treat" does. When I say to her, "I want to pick you up like a little baby," she bolts. When she was little I used to pick her up like that and whisper, "My baby, my baby, my baby," rocking her back and forth. Now, there's white hairs on her muzzle; she doesn't want to be picked up anymore.

I wonder what that couple are having for lunch-- I recommend the fried shrimp. I wonder if they are holding hands, if he's still chubbing. I like to think that he is.

Imagined Twin

Read it here.

Inventions of Lust

Read it here.

Saturday Morning Blues By Fragonard

The scrim of rolling blinds gives a beige hue to everything outside, the flailing trees and clouds, which seem to have a Fragonard hue today. Could today be that lovely?

Just now I said to the dog, "That's not Daddy-- that's the lesbians." Because we heard a door slam in the hallway. Because Daddy is out hitting golf balls. Striking them. Beating them.

Right now, I'm working on a story about a lost dog, another about two old gay men, and one about a boy who has a crush on a neighbor who's wife has become debilitated.

Right now, I'm thinking there's nothing as lovely as darkly haired thighs.

And wondering if I should buy the new Lady Gaga, even if I think her new songs are too "message-y"?

And why "debilitated" sounds right but doesn't look right.

The Housewife is Always the Last to Know

I hesitate, but there's all this time, all this room, 927 square feet, to fill somehow. There are constants-- the floors, for instance, require constant upkeep, making of me a char woman of sorts, something like a woman on her knees. In a day, I develop pleuresy and die. There are other problems, too-- it doesn't end with death. It never ends with death.

Besides the floors, there's the bed to make, and furniture to dust, the tedium of housewivery. But it's what I hope makes me essential. What industry! What productivity! I want the man to think always, "I can't live without him!" Although I am the first to acknowledge the fallacy of such a statement. I've never considered myself indespensible. But who is, really? I can only make myself useful and needed, for a time. I do not take things for granted; I try not to, anyway. It's all a gift and I am blessed.

But I need to turn things around, turn the table-- well, not so much turn the table as to step up to it. I need to put myself at the table.

I told her today, wrote to her-- who do I have to speak to during the day but the help, the Marias who labor here-- that I was becoming sentimental in my dotage. I was being flippant, but I feel as though I have a sense of the edges of it, this. As always, I can imagine the worst scenarios, creating them fully, realistically, so that they bear, these imaginings, a vividness that makes me turn my head away, as though it were right there in front of me. But I wrote to her, "Wheel me out to the garden , if you would, so that I might see the garden one last time, its weeping willows and azaleas." The doomed heroine.

I think I'll try to imagine a better end, then. Best case scenarios. Life is rich, its rewards plentiful. I still have it.

Meet me on the Moon

Buy it here.

He in His Cups

Read it here.

My Last Good Year

Read it here.

We're Not There Yet

Read it here.

And the Sea Keeps Its Fabulous Shadows

Read it here.