One day my brother Simmy and I were playing out back.  We were sitting on the bank.  In red.  We were wearing brand new matching red jackets and red hats with the word BASEBALL printed on a patch that was supposed to look like a baseball.  Mom got our outfits at the Farmers Market.  She couldn’t resist.  They were on sale and they had both sizes.  Even though Mom knew nothing about baseball, she thought anything having to do with it was for boys.

Memory is a murky tarn.  Momentary perceptions are fleeting.  Tomorrow is a mere belief.  There is much that one does not know and much that one cannot know. Indeed, the mysteries of love, pain, or death are too far beyond human grasp to bring more than bits and fragments into certain existential understanding and comprehension.  It follows that, as writers, we must acknowledge this conclusion.  If we as writers acknowledge the extent of unknown in human experience, it follows that…

I could have, I suppose, picked up enough at the market for several parties all at once.  But I liked the immediacy, the excitement, of rounding the aisles at prime speed.  Hungry people were coming over; and throwing a party is important business, especially when it’s for classmates.  So, straight from Philosophy 457, as I’d done all semester, I threw my book bag on the back seat of my old Saab and headed over to the market.  A pound of extra firm tofu, some tomato paste (3 cans for a dollar)…

a suit that goes bathing,
a suit that’s so spare,
a triangle of sparkles,
it covers a square …

a suit that costs hundreds,
a suit nipple small,
a fraction of fabric,
it makes my skin crawl …

Dad was always erecting something: porches, additions, steps, buildings, sidewalks, and signs. He was a preacher. He said he worked for God. Spirit-filled and hell-fired. If he wasn’t sawing, he was typing sermons, two-fingers at a time. If he wasn’t hammering, he was praying for souls, loudly, pleading like blues singers do with women. It seemed I was always involved. Sometimes I pretended. “Raise up your children in the fear and admonition of the Lord,” he’d say. Dads, good dads, employ their sons in the work of the Lord.

Saint Thomas:  In a photograph of you posted on the Internet, you look pretty dapper for an introspective fellow with a liking for nocturnes and willows.

Arthur:  I’d rather focus on words than photographs, though how the two relate can be interesting.  Sometimes I think books should appear under pen names and without author photos (or with photos of different/random people), so as attention is kept firmly on what’s written.  I mean, does it really matter who wrote something? 

Covid & the Quest for Light in Dark Days Live music is still on mute.  I‘ve not been this artistically low for this long. Ever.  As a lover of melody, I am heartbroken.  As a lover of rhythm, I am motionless.  I want this stinging emotional quiet to end. But despite what the suits are saying, I don’t see light in the tunnel.  I’m still feeling my way in an existential darkness, experiencing a profound loss of the present and

Just before we headed out on our East Coast ‘19 tour of Clap Hands: The Poetry and Song of Tom Waits, Robert Price of New Jersey Herald and I had a great conversation on all things Bovine and Waits. Here’s our complete uncut and unpublished candid exchange recorded on April 11th, 2019. What is the origin and nature of your “love affair” with Tom Waits?  I’d heard some of Waits’ hits such as “Downtown Train” and “Jersey Girl” done up by

picture fire picture blooda palate of petition..hanging and pleading surrounded in self,a yearning flirting vestal pulp.. so I stepped and reached to touch.i plucked it down, thumbed the skinand nosed the lovely orb for scentthen, peeled it open split it wide.. a spurt. a spray, the juice hit my facehow I longed to suck and suck and savor..i put it to my mouth, and ahthere was no sugar, only pucker, only tang. should I, should I put her back up

I can’t believe I’m still learning how to see. I figure if I learn to do that, I can write. I’m not talking about eyesight. More correctly, I’m talking about learning to look. I see too much. I want to look, as Martin Heidegger suggests, so as to allow for a clearing, as if to licht or light up a thing or thought. That way I’ll get a chance to examine it apart from the rest of things. Allowing for a clearing

i awoke hungry .. writers and creativity vultures usually do! .. i opened one eye .. i opened the other .. i poked one arm .. i poked theother .. i slid my fuzzy legs from under the goose feathers .. slappedmy bare feet on a cold wooden floor and sat straight up thinking aboutthe hot coffee .. two eggs over .. hashing spuds’ .. wheat toast andcheap jelly, $1.69 special! i’m a loner and worldly mystic by default .. and

If you gotta go, go all the way.  6A. Go till you can’t take it anymore, till you can’t go any further or farther.  Take it to the tip. To where the rocky land points straight at Paris, France.  The tip of rocky land where the Puritans got down on their knees.  Where they begged God to scrub the dirty filthy abominations from their flesh.  Provincetown.  Ptown for the initiated.  P for those most experienced.  Some don’t mention it at

i saw a purple flower broken by the wind .. a passerby had shored it up it seemed .. so it could drink and mend .. all the other hues of blooms never paid a mind .. for from the sky it looked the same .. and none did look behind .. the earth and root had paid no mind as well .. for growth of bud and seed desire .. love and water for their smell .. i’ll enter

Frying Spam and Other Things to do Before the Rapture is my comedic memoirs of a Pentecostal preacher’s kid growing up in a Pennsylvania steel town. Each chapter explores a formative humorous experience—from my kindergarten infatuation with Denise the pirate, to a pubescent French kiss lesson on a hayride with Jane, a hell-bound sinner. Narrated in the playful voice of a boy, these seventeen narratives embrace the oddities of my Christian Fundamentalist family and my curiosity for everything they said