The Whistling Fire

1 The sun burns today. I wear my cap again, to protect me. The customers look right through me as they slide their shiny, hulking cars into the endless rows in front of Target. One young girl says to the other that I must be wearing a tinfoil hat to keep people from reading my [...]

Two people go into a coffee shop every day. They’re young, done with college, or almost done with it. Doesn’t matter. They both have jobs, and, it doesn’t matter either, how much money they make. The girl orders a tea latte. Guy orders a cappuccino. He likes it dry, to savor the espresso. They sit [...]

A few days after I moved to Atlanta, about twenty years ago, I came home from my new teaching job at Georgia State to find my grass mowed and a lanky white man in his sixties wearing overalls and a straw hat, trimming my hedges. “What are you doing?” I asked, jumping out of my [...]

I have nearly forgotten my mother when I get the news that she’s dead. It happens right after I walk into my apartment. It’s been a long day spent in even longer traffic. I drop everything at the door and head straight into the kitchen. All I want is my Pinot Grigio and a minute [...]

She was a woman who had contempt for women and was easily frustrated by her body—cramps, its tendency to fat, its sensitivity to cold. She came like a man: quickly, usually before him. She spoke plainly when she wanted time to herself, and was good at sending him away, not just when she was angry, [...]

There is a language that dead people speak. It sounds like Portuguese, Swahili, Farsi, mixed sometimes with Hebrew, French and Czech. If I listen closely I can detect a bit of Spanish, blended in with Tagalog and Hopi. I can only imagine it sounds like what God would hear in the chorus of prayers and [...]

Half a dozen servers gathered around Vince’s table and sang a jazzed-up version of Happy Birthday to him. There was a lot of hand clapping and stomping of feet. He shot his wife an I-thought-we-agreed-to-not-do-this-kind-of-crap look, but smiled at the singers. He politely said, “Thank you,” when they finished. One of them reminded him of [...]

Sunny backyard of the not unpleasant upper working class one-story brick house. Scott’s tree house rotting and black, we’re barely able to walk on it. I’m there alone looking down on the party. Scott has turned four and some clouds are passing over the sun. From Scott’s tree house, I can see my house, old [...]

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority it’s time to pause and reflect. That’s what the man with the milky mustache said to me that day in the sultry heat of the post office. It was early. Maybe 9:00 a.m. and already the flies were limping along in a drained glass of [...]

Am I only material for you to feel? Is that all you see when you look at me? -Robert Creeley Wendy woke up to find the room cold. And empty. She watched her fingers roam the swirls of blue and whites on the quilt. A small tear opened the inside and a little down escaped [...]