Haiku On The Impeachment Of Trump
Haiku On The Impeachment of Trump The land is withered By a raging orange sun. It sets. Rain returns.
The Land
The Land The dream companion, me, but more persuasive, whispered the cantrip on the first night I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth birthday when my final friends, all aging, all some way bereft, came down, a-down a-down-o mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same. “Come on,” he said, this voice from the
Dead Low Water
Dead Low Water It was September 8th, my birthday, and I was spending it at my family’s rambling old hilltop vacation house on Cape Cod. I got up very early and descended the two flights of back stairs from the attic bedroom that had been mine when I was a child. Arthritis had recently begun
What The Dead Don’t Know
Abigail Shatten was losing patience with her brother Nathaniel. It was getting on for winter, and the old fool hadn’t begun to split fresh stovewood. “Cold snap comin’”, she said. “If you don’t get crackin’, we’re gonna freeze by Christmas.” “Quit your naggin’, Abby,” he grunted. “Plenty of time for that. We got enough for
The Land
The Land The dream companion, me, but more persuasive, whispered the cantrip on the first night I was afraid to sleep, after my sixtieth birthday when my final friends, all aging, all some way bereft, came down, a-down a-down-o mocking me, gently, but mocking all the same. “Come on,” he said, this voice from the
Casting Couch
Casting Couch Back in the Sixties, when I was starting out as an actor, I’d certainly heard of this particular piece of compromising furniture. But as I made the rounds of auditions, I had never encountered it, even metaphorically. The producers and directors I met were thoroughly businesslike: a glance at my photo and résumé,
More Bad Jokes
MORE BAD JOKES Dave Gardner, originally from Tennessee, was a comedian who specialized in southern vernacular humor, and enjoyed considerable popularity during the 1950s and early ‘60s, due to the recordings he made of his routines. Many of his stories haven’t worn very well, because he was a thoroughgoing racist, and eventually became a sort
The Festival of Toast
The Festival of Toast Dirigibles for Heaven leave on time each hour from the tower on the shore. Wing’d people flicker through the flower-towns, feeding as they fly. Today’s great leader frowns from a monument of paper to a war we loved to lose. Electric cowbells chime in the upland meadows where the tractors mate,
O Tannenbaum!
O, TANNENBAUM! Christmas trees have been part of my life since I was a baby. One of my earliest memories is the scent of pine sap from the fresh-cut tree brought into the little basement apartment where my parents first lived after I was born. World War Two was still on. The war lingers in