Late summer had toasted the grass and weeds, But in the field I found a dandelion ghost, A perfectly spherical puffball of a hundred seeds. I pinched it off and huffed and watched the seeds coast On the random eddies, out, out from my breath Over the exhausted field, like paratroops let from a plane […]
“Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Four shots ripped into my groin and I was off on the greatest adventure of my life!” – Max Shulman, *Sleep ‘Til Noon* Shulman’s parody of Mickey Spillane’s tougher than tough guy style probably represents what most people thought of “detective stories” when I was young. They were considered one of
Low Tastes I – John D. MacDonald and Travis McGee Read More »
In Sergei Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin, that ship’s crew finally rebels over its working conditions, in particular over the food they’re given. They haul a side of beef, writhing with maggots, before the ship’s doctor: “Dr. Smirnov’s eye peering through the doubled pince-nez fills the screen. (Cut to . . . ) “White maggots swarm
These Are Not Maggots: A Self-Help Manual for the Tenuously Still-Employed Read More »
“If you start taking what’s pure in a man, and you start putting it on a bill of sale, somehow you can’t help destroying it. In a way, all that business makes it so a man don’t have anything left to give.” — Sidney Bechet Shortly before I began teaching at El Paso Community College,
It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer. – Blackstone’s Ratio Dark night in a city slum. Three black street gang members, two men and a woman, pull into the parking lot of a housing complex. They exchange words with three members of another gang, all men. The words lead
Channen Smith: A Real Life Crime Story Read More »
During my 7th summer, my grandmother Augusta died. This brought the reality of death to me for the first time. That was also the summer rats got in under our back porch, an infestation that drove Mom about crazy with fear and loathing. All that somehow came together to inspire me to imagine my own
The Mere Miracle of Existence Read More »