Morris Louis lived from 1912 to 1962, a life that spanned two World Wars, a war on drugs, a war on love, a war on fruitcake, and a war on the abstract expressionists. Morris Louis painted in drips, thinning his paint and letting it run in rivulets down the canvas, pooling into a muddy brown on the drop cloth. It can have the effect of looking accidental. He is generally considered to be in the school of My Child Could Paint That.
Continue reading… "Lifespan"When the Santa Fe River ran again, it took nearly a week to wash away all the footprints in its sandy bed. By this time the cottonwoods were greening into their impossible lime, the color of those tight tank tops the high school girls wear even when it’s cold. Up by the Los Alamos labs, where I commute to keep those atoms safely splitting for America, the trees are dying of drought and bark beetle. So I notice the green in the Santa Fe
Continue reading… "Alamogordo"The autumn sun shone brilliant on the still-wet leaves, flashing orange and gold against rain-slicked trunks. Crow perched on the uppermost branch of a swaying hemlock and surveyed the beauty below. He called out a greeting to a couple of relations as they winged past, and received their replies with a bobbing head. Life was good.
Continue reading… "Crow and the Marvelous Wonderful Thing"On the first full blazing-blue sky day of spring you stop by her office at the university’s Humanities Center, where, as well as teaching writing at the local community college in the neighboring town—where you also teach—she works as a secretary. The Humanities Center, its red brick exterior fringed with ivy, you call Hotel Charlie, a holdover from the phonetic alphabet you use when talking on the radio during your
Continue reading… "Hotel Charlie"He’s here because Lily asked him to come. Just as he goes to the plays, the recitals, the “holiday” pageants that are really Christmas shows with one or two Hanukah songs, the gymnastics “meets” where kid do “routines” which consist of rolling around on the mats for a few minutes and then lining up for photographs which are available for purchase at twenty bucks a print. He has three or four of them, plus the ones he gets at
Continue reading… "Iron"Based on the movement of stars and planets in the galactic realm, the Hindu priest had set their mother’s death anniversary for tomorrow at the Livermore temple just east of San Francisco. The three sisters were all spending the weekend at Tej’s house. The last time the siblings had been together, they’d watched their mother dissolving under white sheets and morphine infusions.
Continue reading… "Alongside the Pool"A week and a half ago, this place had been a hub, a veritable mart of commerce, a rainbow soap bubble of bargain-hunting consumers. Now in the post-Christmas void of aisle after desolate aisle, out of whatever ambience the house sound system was chasing—old hit parade stuff, “one toke over the line, Sweet Jesus,” or “Proud Mary keep on turning, churning, burning”—one of those, I could hear him coming before I ever saw him.
Continue reading… "Moving Parts"I sit drinking coffee at the kitchen table looking out the back window over the pasture, all the way to the fence where our land ends. I see our sycamore tree is starting to bloom and block out part of the neighbor’s junk pile. I look over the pasture, scanning from the big cedar in the middle, standing in front of a bigger pin oak, to the left—past the run-in, fenced paddock and honeysuckle, back over to
Continue reading… "Pastoral"The first letter to appear in the newspaper was Janice’s own. It ran about a week after the incident with the bear cub in the tree.
~
Sept. 11
Dear Editor:
I am writing to alert citizens in Delaney Springs of an unfortunate circumstance
If you understand who and what I am, it may bring you closer to believing in your heart that everyone, including you, dances up and down a scale of chromosomes that determine gender preference. On one end is Shirley Temple with ringlets; on the other is Rocky Balboa boxing. In the middle, Prince. I’m a girl with a fierce heart who wants no surgery or hormones to be a man. With all the mishegoss swirling around about who goes in what bathrooms—forget about it.
Continue reading… "ENTL, THE BIRL"