Fiction: "Block Island Ferry"

January 12, 2018 in Writing & Pictures

Ellen looked up. She was surrounded by a sea of empty seats. She’d noticed the noise of the cleaning machine had stopped. But hadn’t thought beyond that. Now she glanced at the floor. It was so shiny she had to look away. A man wearing a khaki shirt and the same color pants stood in front of her, holding the handles of his waxing machine. Ellen noticed that his moustache was gray, but not his hair. She took a breath, then looked into his eyes. They seemed blank, and safe.

Five Poems, after Edward Hopper

December 18, 2017 in Writing & Pictures, Poetry

Hopper’s work is all about the space between people and things, space that is usually filled with light that never really illuminates, space that exists on its own plane, space and light that create their own tension.

My Sally, My Dear

January 04, 2014 in Lovers & Other Strangers, Fiction, Writing & Pictures

I will recall this as a happy time. I can do that. I doubt that Gloria can, will ever be able to. Why I keep the picture, this picture, in the drawer. Gloria never goes near the drawer. I think she knows why, even though she won’t say, but I think it would kill her, or close to.

Aunt Cat's Picture

January 03, 2014 in Fiction, Lovers & Other Strangers, Writing & Pictures

You asked about what happened, so I tried to remember. Mama never talked about it, not to me at least. What’s here is what I pieced together, through overheard words, voices raised and lowered, looks—the shards stuck in a brain corner, wanting to merge, waiting for a stray sunbeam to strike the remnants from, say, pieces of broken glass, and suddenly, there’s a pattern.

Minox

January 02, 2014 in Fiction, Lovers & Other Strangers, Writing & Pictures

The guy in the picture came back into my life like Marley’s ghost. Of course I knew that face. It was the lead picture in my exhibition in that winter of ’95. When I walked into the gallery, there he was, sitting by the window, an older guy in a trench coat looking like the wind would blow him into the Hudson. He stared, then motioned me to come over. I was surprised he knew who I was.

He answered my question without my asking: “I saw you back then. I got a good memory,” he said. Thirty years ago I was a kid.

Janine

January 01, 2014 in Fiction, Lovers & Other Strangers, Poetry, Writing & Pictures

I loved her before I met her. It was this freak deal. She had lived in this place where I lived, but she lived there two or three people before I came.