My job is gone. Just upped and moved away. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.” It’s a Friday, way after 5pm. I get drunk as I strip my cubicle down to its grey blahness. Say “see ya” to the dying diffenbachia in the…

Prompt 1   Out of Nowhere!   (First two lines from Selkie Weaning Young (Redux) by Diana Khoi Nguyen   This is how she found us the past draped about us like a cloak, she offered a helping hand soon the weight of the past…

Whether it is a dream or not it doesn’t matter   But somehow Life has conspired to find me here, now, with you….   I find myself…   With this mountain Stranger…kinfolk… This imperfect black strength This beautiful scarred freedom My history…my possibility…and more… I…

4 On marriage tying myself into the future the taste of one mouth on mine its truths sometimes sometimes its own selfserving lies sweet sweet

I was 38 He was 49 It seemed we knew what we were doing (he’d done it once before) no one does not fully anyway how could anyone predict the turbulence the fraught years filled with family drama age doesn’t matter commitment does self doesn’t…

our love is a choice we made many years ago we are still at it

Everything will change they say, half Are doomed, ventures that end nowhere Or bear fruit that turns poisonous.   Outdated, based on slavery, dominant Wills that trade freedom and sex for Comfort and banality.   To beat the odds then, to have rolled the Dice…

Wring me out like you did your finest silk shirt that you stained with wine over last night’s dinner. You know it’s dry clean only! If you hadn’t wanted more of its oaky aftertaste. If you hadn’t been watching me out of the corner of…

The only catcall whistle is the squeaking of the local grocery store’s automatic door echoing into the almost empty parking lot when a few of us stragglers are making the almost-forgot milk run at 10pm    And we all compare neighborhoods by how many traffic…

The sky opes its mouth. Clouds burp out. I smell raspberries. I taste soot. I hear silence. I touch your face. I see persimmons ripening. I taste melancholy. Bernie Sanders flies over LA. If I stand on my toes I can just barely touch his…