When you met the luv of your life, you got to feed him right.  It ain't about just you and he rollin around the waterbed in the back of the trailer.  There's a front of the trailer too (less you just had a tornado) and you gotta thaink about… Read full post »

Brother needs a job so much that finally he is willing to break down and go back to the shipyard he hated as a teenager.  Actually, he was desperate enough to go back a few months ago, but he asked friends of friends who led him around  or had their own friends hired… Read full post »

Lincoln (claimed he) had syphilis, and we know it could have killed his wife and three of his children.

Washington wouldn't kneel in church and often left before communion(oh, for shame!).  When the capital was in Philly-- which had a law setting slaves free after 6 months of residence--he would… Read full post »

 I am all out of ideas 

There is nuthin to be written

Since I’m so out of ideas

On my big ass I’m a sittin

When I start to write a word

All I come to is a wall

Thick and numb as dubya’s skull

But much taller than just… Read full post »

Eins.   The first thang that I remember knowing, was a lonesome whistle blowin', and a young'un's dream of growing up to ride... 

 Wahid. I was once banned from a mosque.  It had to do with a manic episode.  The imam's wife, a teacher,  seemed sad about this.… Read full post »

Reading the guest post about someone who wanted to go back and find The One--the love of his youth--made me wonder again if I have missed one of the most remembered experiences in many lives--the first love.

For me there has been no first love...not even a serious boyfriend. I have… Read full post »

While crossing a bridge on the way back from Walgreen's, I had a revelation.  It seems crazy to say and I did not plan to write it.  It is something that a million people could have told me in the past, but it all caught up with me today and I… Read full post »

 My new job is kicking my ass.  I wish I had the time to even explain how.  Let’s just say government regulations and weirdo computer systems and people who tell me I must ask questions and a team leader who, sitting in the next cube, whispers to someone how stupid my… Read full post »

This December 1^st, I started training at the Worldwide Widget Manufacturers.  Having lost my last job three months previous due to this superb economy, I was happy for another chance at solvency.  Also, I have a sick mom whom I partially support and an out-of-work brother.  I ne/… Read full post »

...-prone Mother Who Has Heart Trouble

Me:  You don’t, Mama, you don’t need to check your medicine.  I’ll give you—

Her:  It was right here.  Just let me--- (yanking things out of a carefully packed sack)

Me:  MOM!  I just fixed that—… Read full post »

The diesel truck ahead stirs butterflies in its passing wind. They start from the shaken greenery, bouncing like dust from an old quilt.

A call from a few hours ago set the trip in motion, set me crying on my brother’s shoulder, and set us on a path to pick up… Read full post »

When I saw all that right to die stuff, I couldn't help but think of my poor great grandma Elsie, 105 years young and still hanging in there by the grace of God and her Lee Press-on Nails.

Gran had a stroke heart attack anerrysm a while back when she… Read full post »

(overheard by family friend on call at a D.C. hospital):

"Baby, I loves you.   You knows that I do," Man groans at Woman, "but you gots to quit stabbin' me." Read full post »

Breathless with a bloody hand, he pounds the midnight door, finally hearing a wheeeezing from within: “Who…is it?

With a smile that glides through solid oak:“It’s your old friend, Jimmy!”

“I don’t know any Jimmy.”

“I just need to use the phone. I… Read full post »

for a boy from Minnesota.  He was tall, with dishwater hair and long, finely-shaped hands.  He wore the slacker clothes of the 90s--corduroy pants and sweaters.  He was full of cleverness and irony.  And he had a girlfriend.

I met him in England, where I went to do an exchang… Read full post »

The still, small voice spoke to me the Friday before Thanksgiving, when I saw a van with scrawled-upon windows-- “Close SOA.”  “Stop WHINSEC.”  I may have been the only one on that part of highway 90  who even knew what those messages referred to.  They gav/… Read full post »

Why I Protested Fort Benning’s “School of the Assassins” November 2008

1.        Because I met a man recruited into the School of the Americas/WHINSEC from poverty in Latin America who said that they teach you how to poison a village water supply… Read full post »