Walk Across Town

I was 13-years-old, just out of school for the summer and eager for every day to start, waiting for the dirty hot sweatiness of an Oklahoma June so I could head to the creek on my bike, plunge in and let the sun dry my skin. But in mid-May, the weather was still only lukewarm, and I put a T-shirt and overalls on before starting off for the newspaper office where Mom worked.

7 Weird Things About Me

1. I used to make bug cemeteries in the back yard when I was a kid.

2. I used to drive a taxi on the graveyard shift when I lived in the city--and I never had a problem except with talkative drunks.

Alive End: Preface

I wrote the goodbye letter to Sleep and mailed it. I thanked Sleep for the good times and the bad and indicated that maybe I would see it again sometime but that I didn’t seem to be able to use it just then. Even when I get so tired and my body feels like an anchor sinking to the ocean’s depths, I can’t bury that hook into Sleep.

So, Sleep, go find someone else.

Poem of the Day: Tenuous

The way of this life is a tenuous one.
My son flirts with joy at a cherry popsicle
in the afternoon and that evening
must stand his ground in the backyard, when
he tells his new friend Stuart,
I am not a baby. You think I'm a baby.
The way of this life is a tenuous one.

Montie Jean Poem 1: Microwave

She didn’t want the damn thing. She TOLD Jack
and Leigh, I got no use for that damn thing.
They set it up on the table she kept
potted plants and grocery sacks on, and she
ignored it for two weeks before warming
up some dinner rolls. She pushed start; her heart
fluttered at the sound of the glass cracking.
It’s that twisty-tie, Jack said on the phone.
She has a drawer full of them and ketchup
packets, rubber bands, odd buttons, pencils,
coupons, decks of cards, scissors, dominoes,
her husband’s upper plate with exposed wires,
silver and pink, flat, unused for nine years,
firmly stuck to a package of mustard.