I dreamt of the market and it's smell of wet cardboard, produce and meat. And him - the boss. He was charming, dark eyed, wild haired and undeniably crazy. It was a cult, not a business, his own kingdom where he paired people based on personalities , yoked together like oxen. Two, he reasoned, made a complete employee. We worshipped him at daily meetings and sometimes we were called in pairs to grovel before him. I waited for such a meeting alone ... and alone meant termination. Dreaming, I teetered on freedom. Waking I was terrified of loosing my job.

Dust sifted through the slant of sunlight and her nose filled with the scent of hay and chicken shit. The heat plastered her hair to her neck and her shirt to her skin but neither condition bothered her overmuch. The hay was old and moldering, but it was hay and the cow was hungry. They were all hungry. Five dry months had shriveled the fields, emptied the well and sent Granger to St. Louis for work. He'd not returned, and she suspected he wouldn't. She slid the bale through the trap door, sighed and followed it to the floor below.

She dipped a long, lacquered nail below the rim of her glass and gave the ice cubes a quick swirl. The bartender swept past, dragging a wet towel along the glossy bar top, leaving a damp trail and the lingering odor of sour water. ‘Well,' she thought, ‘I wanted a place where wouldn't bump into someone I knew'. She smiled, the closest she came to belonging in this joint was the wide ugly run in her hose and the slowly purpling bruise high on her cheek. The ruined hose angered her more than the bruise. Guys hit, she accepted that,

Blast these words, miserable things, dark marks on pristine paper that taunt and tease and fail to come when bidden. So simple to collect in mass, and so difficult to arrange meaningfully. I have favorites that I slip into quiet conversations where they ring and shine like steel bells. Words I cannot spell but say with gusto and pride in the knowing of them: petulant, cacophony, sylph, lurid, febrile ... and so many others. None, that dance for me like trained bears, weave themselves into beautiful tapestries or grow like weedy gardens. Rather, like ghosts, they drift just beyond reach.

She dipped a long, lacquered nail below the rim of her glass and gave the ice cubes a quick swirl. The bartender swept past, dragging a wet towel along the glossy bar top, leaving a damp trail and the lingering odor of sour water. ‘Well,' she thought, ‘I wanted a place where wouldn't bump into someone I knew'. She smiled, the closest she came to belonging in this joint was the wide ugly run in her hose and the slowly purpling bruise high on her cheek. The ruined hose angered her more than the bruise. Guys hit, she accepted that...

I wasn't expecting her to be standing there, in the hallway leading to my office, but there she was, Wendy. Florid cheeked, elegantly coifed and half naked. An evening gown, fisted in one hand and her limp breasts fisted in the other. Dressed she was thin; naked she was frighteningly gaunt. Past her prime, freckled, sallow skin drooped from her as if she had been slathered in frosting and tapped once on a hard surface so that is bulged and slid in waves toward the floor. Her expression changed from surprise to exasperation. I snapped my ‘o' mouth shut and...

‘Fucking bitch!', he yelled as he ran a finger along the ugly key mark in the driver‘s door, except with his swollen mouth it came out more like, ‘fushing bish'. Carla wondered if the woman who had keyed the car had also sent the dude around to bust Benny up. He kicked one of the near by trash cans and continued his tantrum. She giggled and sank a little lower in the passenger seat, laughing at Benny would earn her a black eye of her own. Another can went over as he discovered the broken headlight; Carla studied her...

‘Excuse me', he'd said as he pushed past her in the airport concourse. She'd scowled back and continued her hurried rush toward the gate. And now, carry-on stowed, seatbelt buckled, and taxing down the runway she realized that he'd taken her wallet. The woman next to her stoically ignored the torrent of curses flowing from her mouth. Anger passed as she realized how little he'd gotten away with, a credit card, twenty-three bucks, video card, and a handful of photo's. The real loss was the wallet itself and the photos, and the fact that she had no cash for a drink.

His desk is littered with scraps of paper, remembrances he has rescued from the corners of cards and mailing labels. "Love you Daddy-, in swirled, loopy script on a corner of flowered stationery. "Miss you lots!"with a heart to dot the exclamation point. His own name, and address in his son's blocky print that travels slightly downhill; a lefty, like his grandfather. "Love, Mom-, from a person who no longer exists, save for that torn morsel of birthday card. Those near his heart and far from his person collected on tattered papers, worthless and invaluable. He shoves them aside...

It took me a moment to realize she was moving. Her wheelchair was traveling so slowly I feared it had failed. By the time I overtook her she had turned to travel in the same direction. I wasn't sure if she had seen me, so very quietly I said my ‘hello'. Which she returned heartily in an accent as thick as the knots in her aged knuckles. "My name,"she said is, "Nila. No, it is Leonila but I changed it. I don't like..."Her voice trailed looking for the words, "the way they fracture it-. I smiled back, "I'm...

We walk in the early evenings, her with her nose pressed to the pavement to read the daily doggy news, and me with mine in the air, spotting kitties that she does not see tucked under cars and in bushes. Bits of music and evening news mingle with the scents of dinners cooking, and the sour sulfur water of sprinklers. With each step the sun fades even as the moon grows brighter. A group of children have stopped their kickball game to have a belching contest, and stop me to judge. The winner, a freckled girl with haphazard ponytails who...

Grandma: un-sweet iced tea, calloused hands, clothes pins in a bag on the line, poppies in a tractor tire flower bed, the birdbath, chickens, leaf lettuce and pole beans, rice for breakfast, Avon, Billy Graham, bodice rippers, a cast iron corn bread mould, making chocolate chip cookies, homemade slippers, bathroom rugs in the car floorboards, innumerable little yipping dogs, wild cats, a red prom dress, cherries and walnuts, gallon jars of milk with thick cream at the top, ice cream with Quick powder in a tall glass, Colonial bread chairs, braided rugs, glass straws, a fire place, music, God, gone...

I loved her. I never met her, exactly, but I loved her. I knew her by bits of information, the things she chose to share online. She described grocery visits, language classes, what was for dinner, what she was reading - vignettes of her life. And there were photo's, a new one each day. Her perception of the world. Homeless men, whose names she knew, cattle on a beach in Greece, a long crack in a brick wall in Manhattan. And sometimes, rarely, an imager of her, a knee, her hand, a high cheekbone, an upturned eye. She was beautiful...

I entered the little shop more to escape the summer heat than because I had interest in its contents. It was pleasant enough, brightly lit, clean, filled with pretty objects - a women's shop. I idly looked at the shop's offerings and plucked my shirt away from damp skin. As I passed the counter a woman stood and greeted me with a quick smile and an appraising look. "The air is nice, hey?"I smiled back, busted, "Yes, its very nice. You don't mind do you?" Her smile widened, dark eyes glittered in a full round face, raisins in tapioca...

She was large, and though carefully dressed, disgusting. She stopped, as I knew she would next to my aisle and put a bag in the overhead. Her's was the window seat and I stood and moved to the aisle so she could pass. She thanked me with a smile and startling blue eyes; sat and began fumbling with the safety belt. For a moment I was sure she would have to ask the flight attendant for a belt extender. Embarrassment and frustration rolled from her in palpable waves. Finally it slid home with a victorious click and we both sighed...

Aside from my father, who in my early years had a penchant for wandering the house nude, I had never seen a naked man until I took Life Drawing in college. Our first model, another student, was fine and fair and pleasant to look upon until the professor asked him to change poses. He walked to the corner of his dais nearest my bench and thrust his hips in my direction raised his hands over his head and became a Greek statue. Perfect, until his penis began pointing in my direction, reducing me, and several others to giggles and ultimately...

You sling words at me like small dull stones. Dull because you do not wish to cut, but rather to bruise and break. Dutifully, I collect them and hold them to myself, a gathering of insults and curses. And I polish them with belief, these poisoned pearls, and the stones they were grow to be boulders that clatter and clash within me. I cleave to them, certain that someday I will find a perfect shore to cast them from. Skipping on that glassy surface, away from me until they are but stones again, and then not stones but ripples ...

The earth, smelling of loam, slipped from her hand in a rivulet that bounced and scattered as it struck the glossy coffin lid. The first handful for their son, Peter. The second she gouged from the fresh dug pile warming in the too bright sun, and held, fisted tightly in her hand. The second for her; hers to keep or to cast away. Hers to hurl at the pearl grey coffin gleaming from its place in the dirt, or grind into the shiny face of the officer who carefully folded the flag that was still clutched to her chest. Hers ...

I had it, last night just as sleep was rolling in like a damp fog. The perfect necklace of words and phrases. A work of genius, pure and clear, stuffed with metaphors and symbolism. Art, it was art, I tell you. And it is gone, gone like a wisp of curling smoke rising from a dying ember. Last night it seemed so solid and real and now I cannot find even one word of it. Not one thread to lead me through the minotaur's maze, one crumb on the forrest path, or one star to follow. Gone, slipped away like...

The phone rings and a sleepy voice answers. I am sorry I woken her and offer to call back, but she wont have it, and wakes slowly to speak with me. The conversation starts awkwardly, as strangers, but quickly we warm to each other till we are laughing like teenagers. We gossip and chatter and complain about our men in hushed tones broken by raucous laughter and swears. Ladies night out a thousand miles apart, better in person, the best we can do apart. Known each other for years? No, introduced by the internet and in person only once, but...

Will it kill me? I remember asking after he delivered his diagnosis. Probably, was the answer, in twenty years. And then he dismissed me to the waiting room with a curt, you can find out more about it on the internet. My body, the traitorous overachiever. My immune system is stuck in high gear, it cant cure the common cold, but it tries to fix wounds I do not have by packing me with collagen. Lungs, intestines, heart, I am dying from the inside out, and it really pisses me off. A death sentence at thirty was not what I ...

The sun was not kind, her pale skin is an angry shade of red, she feels feverish and worn. She is filthy with dirt, leaves and thorns, her hair is askew from the constant breeze. Her knees are tired and her back too, but its been worth it. Where once was bare earth and weeds there are now eight rose bushes, two plumeria and a neatly trimmed sea grape. Six black bags of trimmings are lined neatly near the house, and she is tired. But the promise of color and scent and new growth, eases that ache, even as she...

The pencil in his hand stuttered to a stop. He'd drawn the image of her, again. She haunted his dreams, sleeping and waking, and now it seemed she deigned to clutter his work as well. Emma. A hundred years before his time; now just a family fairy tale and a painting hung in his grandfather's study. She was a great, great, great something or other, a far distant relative of little import, save that since hearing her tale over the Christmas holiday, he'd thought of little else; that and her image. Dark eyes, dark haired, plain clothed, a farmer's wife...

Get up, damn you, get up, get going. It's easy, throw back the covers and swing your feet out, sit, stand, walk. Your life is wasting there under those covers; I don't care how comfortable you are. I know you aren't stupid, and I don't think you are lazy, so why then is it so damn difficult for you to get up and do something for yourself? You do realize it's for you? Right? It's not work, it's not sweat; it's health, why do you avoid it? Get up, wake up, get up. Roll out, lets go, it's easy. Try.

It is not me you see here in these words. But who I wish I were or rather who I want you to believe that I am. The face I show you may be different than that which I show your neighbor, and it is certainly different than which I show myself. I feel most comfortable in darkness. It is soothing, still and I no longer exist, and briefly I am whole, not shattered into these facets. Why? Why do I hide so? Could I answer that we might both see my true self for the first time in years.

As children we had a path for every occasion, paths for the mini bike and go cart, paths that took us though the cow pasture and into the woods, crawling paths made from widened rabbit runs and a shortcut to the main road, narrow trails through bamboo and dried stream beds. We traveled under roads through drainage pipes, even braving the long, narrow tube that lead beneath the interstate and the roar and rattle of passing semi trucks. I miss them now, our sure paths with their known destinations, safe save for those that traveled beyond my mother's shrill call.

I knew what she wanted even before she changed direction to approach me. I broke the rules, I made eye contact and muttered a hello, and my punishment was her approach. Squat and round, shirt opened too wide exposing deep, wrinkled cleavage and a smattering of freckles. Her eyes dim with hopelessness, she excused herself politely before making her request, money for a sandwich. She showed me a fat lip and skinned up knees, her husband, she said. I gave her three dollars, sure there would be no sandwich. I passed her later, happily eating a taco at Mama Rosa's.

Glenna cocked her head and looked up from her gardening, "Rain tonight-, she said to no one in particular. Emmet leaned on his shovel and surveyed the sky. Crystal blue and clear. ‘Crazy old woman', he thought and went back to turning the row. She pulled the gloves from her hands and stood, hands on knees, then one hand to the center of her back. "My father always said old age was a gift, tell you true, I still don't know why." She laughed a cackling old woman laugh and lurched off toward the house. "Water, Emmet?" He grunted and ...

She is old, fragile, her ninth life is almost used up. She lays across my chest, cradled in my arms like a baby, and purrs in her sleep. All but her tail, that is, it is still swatting about, angry at the indignation at being handled so. I tell her though weepy eyes that it is ok, she can go. But she keeps on with her deep rumble, whiskers twitching with anticipation of a dream mouse, or small bird. She is gaunt, her body is failing to use the food she gobbles up insatiably. Like the bird she dreams...

He looks at me sometimes as though he's never seen me. A new and wonderful bug to rip the wings from and chase about the window sill. And other times, he looks through me as a puddle of water, and stares at the asphalt beyond. I am solid, I am vapor, I am a tic of time, before he moves on to the next attraction. He can be consumed in an instant by a new idea like a flash fire, and quickly it burns out to re-ignite and draw his attention elsewhere. A moth to flame, and burned by flame...

Have you ever noticed that some things taste just as their colors should? Cranberry juice, for example, tart and sweet and tastes red. Apples, adversely, never taste red to me. They taste of the browns, golds and russets of fall. Jealousy and envy, they say are green. But I disagree, they are grey, the deep ominous grey of storm clouds and they taste of bile. Bile, is green so perhaps that is where the infamous ‘they' took their description. But bile doesn't taste green, it tastes yellow, the same way piss smells yellow. Green is the salty taste of celery...