I remember after the rain.The field turned heavy and green.Baseball cleats sank deeper into soft ground,like the earth had been listening the whole time. I was a boy then.Too loud inside my own body.I beat my chest at the dawn,like it owed me something.Screamed into wet air,just to hear it come back different. We […]

She begged for it, pleaded,like everything alive does. Scratch at the door,singing her little sermon,tail ticking time.Green eyes flashing,centuries of instinct. So I put her out. Mesh cage on the porch.Sunlight thin.World almost safe.I left her there,like every other sunshine promise day. Groceries. Yogurt. Tuna. Cheap bread.Another thing crossed off. Then the sky went mean […]

  The moth kept pouring itselfagainst the porch light.Over and over.A tiny, dusty bodychasing something brightthat had no intentionof saving it. I understood that.Spent enough yearsdoing the same thing.Following neon signs.Half-empty glasses.Things that looked warmfrom a distance. I was twenty-one,standing beside my little brotherin a hospital room on Mercy Street.Too young to understandhow fast a […]

  I was standingon the eighth hole,a 99-yard par three,thinking about the shot.Nine iron in my hand.The sweltering July heat.Staring into the sunat the green.That big oak treeon the right side.Thinking abouthow many timesI had found it.Avoid the trouble right,I whispered to myself.Golf is strange that way.You overthink everything.A man can spend four hourschasing a […]

  I wake to the ache in my bones,the muscle spasms in my back,a quiet coup under my flesh. The mirrors say sixty,my hands say forty,my mind thinks it’s still seventeen, wants to skinny dip with my girlfriend,run down a fairway,cruise to the pond,rod in the trunk,fish on a line,heart thundering like the feral fields […]