Flying Tortoise
My son can tell turtle from tortoise and this one’s the latter, breast-stroking half-webbed arms through the air while sailing forward, held in small hands that carry the critter like a messy hamburger (fingers on the underside, thumbs on hexagons, elbows angled). The tortoise’s tough reptilian arms curve, sweep and retract, dry-swimming as we airlift him from parking lot to forest. We laugh at the audacity of his black bullet head which he stretches out front like a curious tourist. “He likes me,” says Felix, setting him carefully down in a puddle. “Animals always like...
Read MoreSeal and Pup on the Beach
Barely two feet long, its fur dries in Hawaiian sun to a rich silken ebony. Blue-black eyes hide behind rings of warm white sand. Its mother rolls over on her side, uncovering a glaucous belly, four budding nipples. The pup twists onto its back to nurse, a gentle sucking, soft as waves retreating from the beach. Then, it folds up under its mother’s chin like a beard, crosses its flippers across its chest, and sleeps the sleep of love and safety. The tide ebbs but all else...
Read MoreA New Language
Now the sounds twist in your ears, all the verbs wrong—present and you tensed in the past, no word for future, tomorrow. How to translate this plainest hour, grief’s land mines plotted across the hours’ winter fields, ambush planted under every step. Some days, a journey. Some nights, a fight through foreign dreams. One breath, one word at a time, here, now, yes. A phrasebook, color-coded. One jay in the pine, turning blue away from gravity, into a jewel. A bench where the fountain mutters and children laugh from the swings. It flashes back to you in short bits, in...
Read MoreHaiga
Text-only version: fluorescent bulbs mock the snow saying here is the sun to apartment flowers
Read MoreThe Sign
We were on a road trip in a blue station wagon through the oppressive heat and the barrage of windshield bugs of the southern states. I played with toy soldiers in the back where I bounced around with the luggage. Dad saw the rest stop up ahead, a Howard Johnson’s advertising 24 flavors of ice cream, so we pulled into the lot. I ran ahead to the lobby bathrooms and started to push through the door of the men’s room when a big hand grabbed me by my collar and yanked me back hard. “Not that one, boy,” the man said gruffly. I looked up thinking I had...
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