November 8, 2023
Taking five from Janey’s artist’s residency and my Wordfest Conference at Banff. Lake Louise behind us and the ground a solid nine-degrees F. Met Anthony Marra for the first time at Wordfest who commented that we have all betrayed or been betrayed enough by the time we’re twelve to write a pretty great novel. Also, Eleanor Catton read from her recently Man Booker awarded “Luminaries.” Later that night, she and I shared some stories and laughs over a couple beers.
-
Recent letter from old time and long lost art school friend, Bruce, aka Fang, and if there are living pirates, he’s one: “Do you remember why we locked you in the bathroom that night?” He said I then squeezed out of the tiny, and thought-to-be-painted-shut bathroom window employing shampoo lube and Houdini moves and found
-
We’re rollin across B.C. in the summer and the top down and the radio on and the wind and I can hardly hear a thing she says. She’s shouting and trying to light her smoke and the wind is winning and she’s been trying to light this fat screw job of a spliff for five
-
Guest writer, Howard Rappaport and remember that name. Writer extraordinaire, accomplished composer and fastidious gardener. Notes from the Brazilian Embassy Flavio Feijoada Yesterday I had the same dream where one of my classmates spits a spitball into my ear and I become quite deaf. D. wants to have a baby next year. She criticizes me
-
You remember when you were all about to change the world and what’s wrong with those old white guys in power and didn’t they get it? Brennan’s sketch in the margins during a too-long lecture in art school. Then you were in college and you were late for class because you were at the all-night
-
Tomas. First-gen Puerto Rican kid I met in West Chester, PA, and I was his art teacher, and he could draw like an old master when he was ten. He and his friends showed up at our third-floor walk-up early mornings before school. I’d answer the knock—a toothbrush in my mouth. Tomas, the leader, would
-
On a Mission It’s Friday night and everyone’s talking Spanish and you’re feelin the dance comin on and you’re in your groove and you’re owning the street and Tommy yells and flips the bird at a delivery truck and the black guy fryin up ribs in the trunk of his car laughs and you tell
-
Sometimes it’s easy too look back and see where things went seriously and ass-over-tin-cups wrong. On the way in from the coast, across California’s nearly deserted great savannah and on a wonderfully wide, smooth road surface, I’d become a bit full of myself and let the bike off leash. “Let’s see what this thing’ll do,”
-
Memorial Day They were young and strong brothers and they were the men of their family when the country came under direct attack with lives lost at Pearl Harbor. They dropped what they were doing, left the mines in Pennsylvania, enlisted, were trained with young men from neighboring mining towns and villages, and they fought
-
One of the skaters’ little known truths is how screwed their feet get from hours of training and competition. Blood in their socks, mangled toes, crushed arches and toe nails falling out. It started out as endurance racing in 1935. Then, in 1937, Roller Derby got to pushing-and-shoving and hysterically physical with teams competing in
-
It was my week to drive, we were late, and, technically, I was drunk. The Dodge wove between lanes and we were still an easy fifteen minutes from the Tyler parking lot, then another five-or-so to the painting studios. “You okay?” Ron asked. He had to be drunk, too, having just dropped me off from
HJ Brennan 