Michael Simms: What it wasn’t
It wasn’t bigger than a breadbox.
It wasn’t smooth as glass.
It didn’t smell good or bad
Or have any taste whatsoever.
Michael Simms: Mac
One of my first mentors was Mac McInerny, an old farmer who hired me when I was 16 to work in his greenhouse and to do handyman repairs for his friends. We drove around town in his beat-up pickup truck delivering gravel and lumber, fixing roofs and planting trees.
Tom Engelhardt: Welcome to the Martians!
Our World Is Increasingly Like a Science-Fiction Novel.
Katy Giebenhain: Falling Asleep in a 300-Year-Old Industrial Cottage in Derbyshire Surrounded by Star Wars Action Figures
the enemy with a thousand faces
the mentor with a thousand faces
the waitress with a thousand faces
Al Ortolani: The Taco Boat
Last night, I bought a 12-pack of tacos
at Taco Bell, not because I was
especially hungry, but because I could.
Patricia Jabbeh Wesley: Flying
When I grow up, I want to be a fish,
a big blue fish if I ever grow up.
Jose Padua: A Routine Evaluation of My Accomplishments at a Late Stage in the Middle Part of My Career
These years of love
have sustained me far beyond anything
I ever could have imagined; a dusting to
an inch of snow overnight on cold asphalt
resulting in a two hour delay is all part
of the good life.
Jose Padua: A Short History of Monsters and Everything Else that Gives Substance to the Dream
in deference to the perverse dreaming
of the dwindling numbers of the upwardly mobile as
they trash and burn their merry way to their new luxury
condominiums decorated in beautiful pastel colors.
Michael Simms: Meconium
it is sacred, the way
soil clinging to the seed
of a new shoot
pushing out of the earth
is sacred
Jose Padua: On These Passing Hours of Butterflies and Dangerous Living
In my darker hours I like to imagine a knitting club
where no one is allowed to smile.
Jefferson Carter: Cat & Transient
I swore I’d stop writing about liberal guilt
& about cats too, but I must confess
last night, I groomed our little black cat
with my tongue
Dawn Potter: Heat Wave
a squirrel is hurling insults, and beneath his screeches the cicadas
insist and sigh, insist and sigh, unmoved by his grandiloquent snit.
Jose Padua: In Proclamation to the Emperors of Agony
Seeing an audience in Central Park holding up their middle fingers in unison is one of my fondest memories—even though I wasn’t among those for whom the finger was intended.
Abby Zimet: Banksy’s Most Excellent Spraycation
“A wall is a very big weapon,” Banksy says. “It’s one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.”
